The Devil in the Details
by Worldmaker
Summary: A sorcerer seeking ultimate power attempts to raise one of the Great Old Ones, but his magicks go awry. Now the beast is on the loose among the vampires and werewolves of Anita Blake's Saint Louis.
1. The Summoning

**The Summoning**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic_

**XxxxxxX**

**_February 29, 1916_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

Luther Black rode to Whitebridge Hall in a driver-less black Hansom surrey that was pulled by two black horses. Despite the popularity of the motorcar, Black considered them gauche, and had promised himself that he wouldn't buy one, or even ride in one, until he absolutely could not avoid it any longer. He was coming from a rather over-wrought production of Oscar Wilde's _Salome._ He decided to himself that the play had, unfortunately, become horribly passe. Such a pity. When it had been first published, back in 1893, it had been quite the scandalous piece, and quite exciting. Ah, well. Times changed, and with them the mores of the public.

His mode of dress, in a fine tailored Seville row suit, accompanied by finely polished leather boots with silver caps, a top hat, and a silk cravat, all accompanied by a cane with a molded silver serpent's head handle, screamed to anyone observing him that he was a man of immense wealth and refined taste. Both were true, at least for certain definitions of refinement.

As his coach rolled up the carefully tended white-cobble drive of Whitebridge Hall, he counted the apple trees lining the road in whispers. Six on one side, six on the other. He wondered about the choice. Twelve was one of the mystic numbers, but it wasn't as powerful as three, or five, seven, or thirteen. He mused that it was likely aesthetics and not a means to mystic power. It happened occasionally that even the most powerful sorcerers engaged in frivolous things for their own amusement.

Distantly, he heard a church bell sound as the 28th of February rolled over into the 29th. It was his birthday; it was the forty-first Leap Year Day he'd lived through since his birth one hundred and sixty-four years ago. As the bell tolled twelve, Black looked to the sky, only to find that the stars had reversed themselves. The Southern Cross hung visible where before Orion had stood vigilant. Before his eyes, a moving star Black knew to actually be the planet Saturn burned its way through the constellation Carina.

His coach stopped just before the doors to the manor. As Luther Black stepped down to the cobblestones, his dark eyes scanned left and right. He was looking for the next sign. As with many of his ilk, his life depended on the passing of omens. He wasn't disappointed.

As Black stood there in the drive, the wind picked up, causing his long opera cloak to flap around his legs. The air around him grew deathly cold; even colder than usual for Missouri in February. He heard a pack of dogs howling after him, coming up the drive, but when he looked no dogs were to be seen. At this he nodded, and with almost exaggerated care used a long black silk scarf to tie his top hat to his head against the force of the wind. The knot Black used was carefully positioned just under his chin. It was, naturally, a square knot: the ends of the scarf were positioned in such a way that they formed a crossroads, of a sort. In this fashion, he was hidden from the prying eyes of all other sorcerers who would oppose him this night.

With a smile that would scare small children, were they to have seen it, Black strode forward to the door and rapped on it, with three quick, single strikes, using the silver end of his cane. He waited, still being buffeted by the wind, for precisely three minutes and eighteen seconds. The moment the door was opened, the arctic winds stopped completely.

The door was opened by a tall, well-tailored Negro who looked Black in the eye when he asked, "May I help you, sir?" Black respected men who weren't afraid to look other men in the eye, because doing so was a sign of scorn, and above all, he would not be scorned. Personally, He wasn't one for all that silly 'superiority of the white race' gibberish. He'd known too many powerful wizards and spell-casters who weren't from Europe to bother with such nonsense. Though carefully examining this man revealed to Black that he wasn't entirely a man at all.

"My name is Luther Black. I've come from Paris to see your master, Mister Whitebridge, and conduct business with him."

The manservant stepped back, away from the door. The butler didn't issue a verbal invitation to enter, and that, again, raised the servant's worth in Black's estimation. He took off his hat, leaving the scarf around his neck, and handed it and his coat to butler, who took both articles silently.

"Is Mister Whitebridge in?"

Finally, the butler spoke. It was a gravelly, scratchy sound that spoke more of the grave than of a living breathing person. "The master is in his study, enjoying a brandy. Would you like one also, sir?" He turned and led Luther Black through the foyer to a curtained doorway, gesturing Black to enter.

"Yes, that would be fine. Thank you."

"Very good, sir." Black dismissed the manservant from his thoughts and entered the study.

**XxxxxxX**

Consider Michael Whitebridge. He is a pinched man in his mid-50s. Slightly overweight, as all nearly wealthy men of his time are. He stands only 5'7" tall, making him on average shorter than the average male citizen of Saint Louis. His head and face – and in truth the rest of his body – is naturally hairless due to alopecia. He has a large, prominent nose, and a ready smile, though like Luther Black's, his smile is that of a viper waiting to strike at a rat.

When he build the Manor back in 1881, the established gentry of the city dismissed him as "new money." Twenty-three years later, they dismissed him as an eccentric lunatic with a reputation for deviant sexual tastes and a propensity for importing prostitutes from Chicago and Cincinnati, and other towns nearby. Those whose ear was even closer to the ground marked him as having a taste for young boys in addition to young girls, and could repeat many rumors regarding children that Whitebridge had caused to disappear by way of murder and Satanic cruelty.

Whitebridge was an established sorcerer, a demon-worshiper, the leader of a cult of like-minded followers, and absolutely not a man you wanted to cross if you wished to continue living a long and healthy life.

Luther Black terrified him.

"Come in, Mr. Black. Its nice to see you again." Whitebridge rose from his chair in front of the study's fireplace. "Please, make yourself at home. Has Dominic offered you a brandy?"

"He has, yes. And yes, it is good to see you again, Whitebridge. How have you been keeping?" Neither man was much for small-talk, but niceties must be observed in this sort of situation. Just getting to the point would never do. Only after the comparative weather in Paris and Saint Louis, the American and French stock market, whether Alistair Crowley was really serious or just a con-artist, and the downing of a second snifter of brandy apiece was the subject of the meeting broached.

"So, Whitebridge... you said you found it?" Black's face was carefully under control to show no reaction, but his eyes gleamed with anticipation.

"I do... I do indeed." This was a grand moment for Whitebridge. He wasn't often treated as an equal by sorcerers of Black's caliber, and yet here he was. He dragged an iron lock box from under a table. After pulling a set of keys from his pocket, he opened the thing, to reveal a smooth black stone wrapped in purple silk. The stone seemed to be made of volcanic glass, and had an odd green light buried deep within it that shifted around the inside of the sphere at random.

"The Basilisk's Eye. Finally!" Luther Black extended a hand as if to touch the artifact, but was stymied when Whitebridge dropped the lid of the box closed. For a moment Black's face twisted with rage, but only for a moment. The man collected himself and straightened. "Yes, that would be what I was looking for indeed."

"So its true then?" Whitebridge looked at his companion with a gimlet eye. "You intend to attempt an Ascension?"

"I intend on doing more than attempt, my good man. When I am through I will not only be a worshiper of the Kings of Edom, I shall stand as one of them."

"Heh. Heh." Whitebridge couldn't help it. "Heheheheheheheh. Yes, well... heh... good luck with that. It will take you, what, a century? More? Ah, well... I do wish you luck."

Black bristled. "I am more than most men, and have ambitions above them." He eyed Whitebridge. "You will go ahead with your plans for a summoning?"

"I will. As you say, I'm not as ambitious as you. I do not wish to become one of the Gods of the Dark Kingdom. I will be satisfied with mere immortality and temporal power. Now, do you have my book?" He shoved the box toward Black with his toe.

Luther Black grimaced and brought a square object from under his coat. It was wrapped in black silk and tied with the same knot Black had used on his hat. "Yes, here. Enjoy." He handed it to the other man, then picked up the lock box. "And with that, I shall take my leave."

"Certainly, Mr. Black." Whitebridge waved vaguely toward the doorway, his manservant Dominic standing by. "Dominic will show you out." Whitebridge sat with his prize in his lap until he felt the traces of Luther Black's presence leave the boundaries of his household wards.

He made a sign to Dominic who left the room silently. Whitebridge caressed the silk wrapping of the book before opening the knot. The book was stained a dark red, its cover a soft, supple leather of a kind not usually seen. The face of a screaming man was embossed on the front cover, a screaming woman on the back.

"You wished to see me, sir?" In the doorway, Michael Whitebridge's only child, his ten year old son Peter, stood waiting.

The elder Whitebridge said, "We have it. The _Liber Terribilis_! It is all the Order needs to proceed. We will perform the ceremony at the next full moon. Pass the word on to Mister Sikes. Have him gather the coven. We will call down Illyria at the next full moon." Michael Whitebridge looked up at his son, who stood motionless. "And then we shall have everything we ever wanted."

**XxxxxxX**

Whitebridge slept, and his dreams were filled with images of power and glory. And death, of course, especially death. They would call down the Primordia Rex, one of the great Kings of Edom, the Dread Rulers, and he would trap it and hold it and demand that it make him ruler of the world. And all would bow to him and despair.

He woke, suddenly. Peter was there, standing over him with a candle. The boy was already dressed in his supplicants robes. "Yes? What?"

"It's midnight." Peter said in his hesitant voice. "It's time."

"Time, yes. Very good." Whitebridge rose swiftly, covering his naked body with robes of his own. Unlike his son's drab coverings, his own clothing were decorated with arcane symbols and charms befitting his station.

He motioned his son to follow him down the dark corridor and the stairway leading to the summoning room in the basement. "You know, son, no one has ever dared attempt what we are going to do tonight. What we will achieve. To summon and imprison one of the Kings... this will be my triumph. Eh, Peter?"

The boy, following behind loyally, nodded. Then he choked out, "Yes, father." when he realized a more full response was needed.

Whitebridge stopped and looked at his son. "Father!?"

"Sorry... Magus. Yes, Magus..."

Whitebridge stared at his son, then snorted in contempt. He turned to continue the walk to the summoning room. "I tell you, Peter, after tonight that vagabond bastard Black won't be making any more jokes about me. No more jokes, not once I have ultimate power in my hand."

Whitebridge swept the doubled doors to the summoning room open. There, in the center of the room, his acolytes were putting the finishing touches on the circle. Nearly twenty feet in diameter, it was framed in black paint, with arcane prayers were inscribed along its circumference. An inner ring of salt lay along the thick black circle's body, itself surrounded by a ring of blood-red wax.

Jeremiah Sikes, Whitebridge's second in the coven, stepped from the shadows. "Everything has been prepared according to the _Liber Terribilis_, Magus. We are ready for the ceremony."

Whitebridge surveyed the summoning room. "Excellent. Everyone, to your places, then. We shall begin." He waited until those thirteen members of his coven, all true believers especially chosen for this task, stepped to their appointed spots around the circle. His son, Peter, stepped back, disappearing into the shadows yet remaining close in case he was needed.

Whitebridge stepped to the podium placed at the 12 o'clock position. It held the _Liber Terribilis_, a silver dagger, a feather, a handful of other things needed for the spell. For a moment, Michael Whitebridge is terrified. This action is an affront, an insult. To think that he... a mortal man... could actually bind one of the Great Old Ones to his service...

For a small moment, he hesitated... he actually questioned if he really wants to go forward with this...

But only for a moment...

"Oh Great One, I conjure thee. I give you the bone of a righteous man, washed in the blood of the Fallen. I give you the dying wish of a virgin, stolen from her grave. I give you a knife, cleansed in tears. I give you a coin spent in hatred. I give you a tooth, ripped from a wolf's jaw. I give you a feather plucked from the wings of an angel."

Without pausing from his conjuration, Whitebridge raised his hand and used the silver dagger from the podium to slash across his left palm. He clenched his wounded fist until the blood was freely flowing. "I give you blood from my own veins. And I give you a name, a name long lost."

There is feeling, like a bell tolling in the back of his mind. This body throbs with the power of the spell, and Michael Whitebridge realizes that he has gone too far. There is no way he could stop the conjuration now if he wanted to. "I call you forth with names, my Lord. I summon thee with venom and pain. I summon thee with blood and I summon thee with despair. I open the gate to thee and call thee forth. Come!"

All around him, his cultists pick up the chant. _Come! Come! Come! Come!_ Whitebridge shudders as every candle in the room flares to life by themselves. In the sudden burst of light he can see his son, Peter, cowering in a corner, blood dripping from the boy's ears. And still the chant, _Come! Come! Come! Come!_

"I summon thee forth in the name of the Old Lords! The Queen Beyond the Pale calls you! The Mistress of All Sorrow calls you! The Muse of Lethargy and Despair calls you! The Lord of the Scarlet Infinity calls you! The Heart of Man's Dementia calls you! The King in Sapphire Robes calls you! The Chaos Irresistible calls you! The Key of Power calls you!"

A golden smoke began to rise from the center of the circle. Whitebridge's eyes widened, as this was a sign none of the old texts warned about. Not even the _Liber Terribilis_ mentioned golden smoke. But it didn't matter. It was working. The conjuration was working!

"They summon you! From the dark they call you, and into the dark they call you! Bone and wish, knife and coin and tooth. Feather and blood and name." The golden mist was congealing in the center of the circle, getting more and more solid every second. Taking a form. Taking a definite form. At last Whitebridge screamed, "Here in the darkness we summon you together! _COME!"_

He stopped, breathing hard. Harder than he breathed at the apex of sex. Harder than he breathed when terrified. Whitebridge concentrated on his breathing, all the while keeping his eyes on the form lying at the center of the circle.

The summoned form was seemingly a naked girl. A child. Long white hair that tinged gold at the ends. Skin unblemished and pale, with patches of gold at her joins, along her scalp, down her arms. She was beautiful, and seemed utterly delicate. She wasn't moving; the power of the spell had obviously driven her insensate.

"We... we did it!" Sikes stepped forward. "I don't believe it. We actually did it!"

Whitebridge finally controlled his breathing. He stared at the still form in the middle of the circle and understanding came to him.

"No. We failed. That isn't Illyria, damn it to hell. We failed." He stared at the figure some more, then shrugged. "Perhaps we can make a silk purse out of this sow's ear, eh Sikes? We still called one of the Old Ones, and we have bound it here."

"But Magus... which one? Which one did we snare?" Sikes question was asked with a quaver of fear that brought a sneer to Whitebridge's lips.

"Which one? Who knows. I surely don't. That will be yours to determine, Mister Sikes." He looked back down at the unconscious being in the circle. "Now, get moving. We need to put _that_ in the cage before it wakes up and slaughters us all." He stepped back from the circle. "Let us not look a gift horse in the mouth. We shall find a way to make this unfortunate mistake pay off for us in the greatest way possible."

**XxxxxxX**

_The emptiness that surrounded Creation and the ephemeral realms of spirit that enclosed it roared with the storms of base existence. Winds that were not winds, and lightning that was not lightning struck at anything and everything that dared enter the shadows beyond the light of creation. The power of the summoning echoed past the material worlds that made up true existence, into the outer darkness._

_Beyond the astral, beyond the city of Man called Babylon, beyond the Lands of Legend where myth lived, beyond the Netherworld of Hells and Punishment, beyond the Elysium of Heavenly Reward, beyond the Rings of Loezen, beyond Yggdrasil and the City-States of Yong, beyond the Mill-Works of Bromion and the Veil of the Temple, beyond Death's Dominion and the Realms of the Four Zoas, beyond even the empty, storm-wracked outer emptiness itself lay the fifth world, the Qliphothic, the Realm of Shining Darkness. The Anti-Creation._

_Titanic, teeth-like mountains jut from warped flowing plains in utter disregard to geography and gravity. Indistinct, wet _things_ writhe randomly from place to place. At random intervals, the landscape... if it can be called such... is interrupted by clusters of humanoid statues made of compacted ash. These figures would resemble huge crouching fetuses to a human eye that saw them in the split second before the realm itself tore the sanity from it. The figures are strung with slimy moss-like bodies, and horrors nest and grow in their empty eye-sockets._

_Mere mundane light explodes here, like a bomb would, causing injury to anyone foolish enough to try and use it._

_There was nothing to see In the Qliphothic Realm, for everything radiated the blackness of pure dark. No human mind could take the sight of this realm; no mere mortal being could survive exposure to it. Fearsome and immortal creatures made it their home, though you could never say that such creatures actually _lived _there..._

_The call of the spell penetrated the realm of the Qliphothic. Its power flowed across the land until it encountered the being known to the mortal men of one earthly realm as Sineya, the Great Predator, the Hunter of All, the Devourer, the Queen of Beasts, the Slayer._

_On any other day... though there was no true time in the Qliphothic and the word 'day' is only a convenience.. Sineya would have ignored the spell, perhaps sending a servant or two on a mission to punish the upstart who dared think it could command the will of an Old One. But today... and again, there were no true days in the Qlipothic... it was resting. Licking its wounds after a fight with another entity, another Old One. It was hurt, and it was tired, and thus the spell ensnared it and dragged it screaming from the Shining Darkness. Sineya shot across the outer emptiness toward the Light of Creation like a dark comet._

_But..._

_Something new and unexpected was waiting in the Light. One one of the many worlds of the Malkuth, the mundane realms where humans had spread like a living plague, a summoning of an Avatar of the Hunter of All had already taken place. The power of Sineya the Slayer had long ago been mystically bonded to the soul of a mere human, who used the power to protect her native realm from monsters._

_Had the power been concentrated in the body of this mortal, this human, this insignificant flea-speck named Faith Lehane, the power of the summoning worked by Michael Whitebridge would have torn the mortal girl from her own realm and thrown it, alongside Sineya itself, into Whitebridge's summoning circle. But this did not happen._

_It did not happen because an easier target was available._

_Even more unexpected than the bonding of Sineya's power to a mortal, its power had recently, as such things were counted in the outer realms, been torn in twain, split between two separate mortals, who each used it to their own ability._

_Luckily for the mortal Faith Lehane, if such could be called luck, the soul of the other mortal, the other flea-speck, that had been bonded with the Devourer was already at its rest in one of the Elysium circles. Within easy reach of the passing Old One as it burned through the ephemeral realms to appear, suddenly and unwillingly, in the center of Michael Whitebridge's summoning circle._

**XxxxxxX**

She was cold.

She was cold, frightened, and her body ached, everywhere.

A moment ago, Buffy Summers had been warm, and safe, and secure. Everything around her had been soft and welcoming and warm and safe. She knew... she _**knew**_ that everything was just fine, and she had nothing at all to worry about. She had been in Heaven. She had been at rest. She had been at peace.

And now she wasn't.

Buffy Summers' eyes snapped open. They were wide, and horror-filled, and wet with tears, her eyes. Above her was a featureless wall of brick, oddly distorted. She stared at it for an eternity before realizing that there was nothing really to see above her.

It took all of her willpower to sit up and look around.

The room she was in was dark – she knew that it was dark, despite being able to see the length and breadth of it clearly – and distorted for some reason. It was cold, and dark, and dank, and cave-like. The walls of the room were dark brick, hung with drapings of deepest indigo.

It never occurred to her to wonder how she could still see color in such a dark room.

Three men, dressed in robes resembling those of fantasy-movie wizards, stood by a pair of closed wooden doors. The men were alert and awake, and she could see the pulse of their heartbeats in their necks and foreheads. The moment she sat up, one of the men left through the doorway.

It never occurred to her to wonder how she could see their pulses, either.

Buffy stood in one fluid motion. It wasn't her intention, but the grace with which she went from sitting to standing gave the impression of a powerful predator, a tiger perhaps, moving to its feet. She took a step toward the two men, one hand extended. Buffy opened her mouth to ask for help, only to close it again when she discovered the reason why everything in the room seemed distorted.

She was in a glass sphere. A huge hollow ball of glass. Buffy moved as much as she could within the confines of her glass prison, examining the interior of the sphere, which is how she discovered that it was sitting on a gold-colored base. There seemed to be no way into the sphere. Not even holes to let air in.

Buffy immediately began to hyperventilate. She was sure she was suffocating. The air in the sphere was close and tight, and what was worse, _it was the only air available in the sphere!_ The knowledge that her air supply had a time limit, that she only had a finite number of breaths before she could no longer breathe at all caused the sphere to close in on her. It was getting smaller, squeezing her tight.

She fell backwards, onto her behind. The glass bottom of the sphere was cold; she could feel it in the back of her thighs and in her buttocks. Suddenly realizing she was completely naked only added to the stress. Her breathing went from rapid to labored.

_**CALM**_

It wasn't a voice. It was a presence, a near overwhelming presence that originated from nowhere and everywhere all at once.. It hadn't spoken to her, it had commanded her – no, commanded was too direct. It had transmitted to her, not quite instructions. Not quite commands. Less than orders and more than requests. Advice, perhaps. Regardless of the nature of the communication, Buffy calmed. Her breathing slowed to nothing, and it took her several moments to realize she had stopped completely. The fear she had felt since waking was gone, and she was no longer cold, or hurt, or shaking. Her body no longer ached.

_Who are you? _Now that she wasn't panicked, she could feel the presence lurking in the back of her head. _What are you doing in my mind? Oh god! I'm possessed! Get out of my head! _She started to panic again.

The answer was a dark impression that somehow felt like a mix between anger and humor.

_**CALM**_

And just like that, she was calm again. It wasn't a command. It wasn't a request. It just was. And it... the presence... was almost soothing. It felt familiar somehow, like something she'd always had, lurking within her. It felt almost like...

Buffy's eyes grew wide again. _Are you the Slayer?_

There was another dark impression. Acceptance. _Of its place as part of her?_ Pride. _In her and her use of it power? _Anger. Always anger. _But if not anger at her, anger at what?_

She examined the inside of the glass cage again, only moving her eyes. In a sudden burst of motion she was standing, one fist extended in the lightning-quick punch that slammed into the glass of the sphere. The whole thing rang like a bell, making the two robed men standing by the door jump in shock. But the glass of the sphere was unmarked. No cracks, no chips. No effect on her prison at all. _What is happening?_ She thought to herself. _And how do I escape?_

_**TRAPPED**_

_**OBSERVE**_

There was a knock at the door, and one of the robed men hurried to open it. Buffy's eyes immediately went to the three men who entered. One, a boy, she dismissed immediately as unimportant. The second, a dark-skinned man in glasses, she eyed for a moment, but just a moment. It was clear that the bespectacled man was of some importance, and that she should be wary of him, but not now. It was obvious that as powerful and important as the second man was, he was only the second to the third man.

The third man radiated evil and dark magic.

_**HIM**_

Buffy was sure the presence was right. This man was the one who brought her here. He was a relatively short man. He was hairless, not even eye-lashes. And he was dressed in clothing that Buffy knew had gone out of style nearly a hundred years before she had been born. He even carried a cane, though he did not need it to walk. Not yet, anyway. The man approached the glass cage, but stopped a good foot short of it. Buffy glanced at the man's feet and suddenly became aware of the black circle painted around her cage. It was inscribed with prayers, she realized, though she could not understand how she could read the bizarre lettering. There were two other rings, one in white, made of salt – again, how she knew this she did not understand – and a red one in candle wax.

_**TRAPPED**_

_**LISTEN**_

The man leaned in, careful to not overbalance himself. "Welcome, Great One. Let me introduce myself. I am Michael Whitebridge. I am Magus of this enlightened order. And I am your new master." Buffy began to open her mouth to speak, to demand release, to threaten, when another impression from the dark presence rolled over her.

_**LISTEN**_

"As you can see, the three circles imprison you spiritually. The crystal sphere imprisons you physically. You will not be getting out unless the circle is broken and the sphere opened. The circle will not be broken, nor the sphere opened, unless I order it." The man brought his hands together and rubbed them. There was a greedy look to his eyes. "We will discuss the conditions of your release later. For now, make yourself comfortable."

_**PATIENCE**_

Buffy took a seat, her legs crossed in front of her. It didn't occur to her to be bothered by being naked and on display for the men in the room. Not anymore. She was sure the presence had something to do with it. It advised her to be patient, so she would be patient. She would be calm, and she would be patient.

_**WAIT**_

_**PATIENCE**_

_**OBSERVE**_

She realized it was good advice. She would bide her time. When the chance to escape came, she would be ready.

**XxxxxxX**

**_March 15, 1926_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

"Bugger and blast her!"

Peter Whitebridge jumped in his chair at his father's noisy entrance. Michael Whitebridge slammed the doors of his library open. Mister Sikes followed. Peter closed the book he'd been studying, but kept it in his hands. He stood attentive, awaiting his father's command.

"I know she can understand me. I know it!" The elder Whitebridge handed his cane off to Sikes. He'd actually come to need the thing in the last few years. "But does she respond? No. She doesn't say a word. Not one word in ten years! She hasn't threatened harm if not released, she hasn't vowed revenge, and she's ignored every demand and entreaty I've made to her! If the guards hadn't seen her move around, I'd swear she was a storefront mannequin!" Michael Whitebridge hadn't even noticed that Peter was standing there.

Sikes overturned a pair of crystal tumblers and poured two fingers of scotch into each. "What do you expect, Michael? We called her down out of the outer darkness against her will." He handed one glass to the elder Whitebridge and took a sip from his own. He shrugged. "She hates us."

"Of course she hates us. I know she hates us." Unlike Sikes, who was sipping his scotch, Whitebridge tossed his down in one gulp, then handed the glass back to his second for refilling. "But she doesn't act like it. She just sits there and stares at me with those creepy little eyes of hers."

Sikes nodded. "Creepy. I like that. Yeah, her eyes are creepy. Like a tiger's eyes. You don't expect eyes like that looking out at you from a girl that looks like Lilian Gish."

Peter stepped forward. "Uh, Father. Magus, I mean. I, uh, I think I found something that, uh, it might be applicable... I mean, it might make dealing with our, um, _guest_, ah, a bit easier. Its in the _Vivlio Apagorevmeni Onomata_." He opened the book he was holding and pointed to the page. "Here, sir... do you see the picture?"

"Yes?" Michael Whitebridge took a pair of glasses from his coat and put them on. "Hmm... yes. Yes, indeed. Why do you think the guards around her are so heavily armed? She was one of the Primal Spirits, I was sure of it. Of the most ancient of Old Ones. But which one? She wasn't Illyria, we knew that. Azogg-Mon, then? Ovilkan?"

He put a fatherly hand on his son's shoulder and the boy almost leaned into it. "No, it had to be Sineya. She was the only one that fit the bill. I had hoped you would work it out on your own, Peter, and you did. Well done, my son."

Whitebridge turned to Sikes and nudged his second in command. "Its good to know that the coven will be in good hands when I'm gone, isn't that right Sikes?"

Sikes barely paused, hiding his anger at being passed over in favor of his master's weakling son, merely smirked. "Certainly, Magus. Certainly."

**XxxxxxX**

**_November 24, 1936_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

"Peter." Michael Whitebridge was stooped now. At 78 years of age, he was finally accepting that he was an old, old man. He walked, carefully and slowly, along the upper gallery of his mansion. "Has there been any news of the traitor?

"No, father." Peter didn't call his father Magus anymore. Not since he had inherited the title. "There has been no sign of Mister Sikes, nor the money and artifacts he stole. The Pinkerton men I employed have found no luck, nor have the demons of the winds I sent after him."

"Demons. Bah, they are the problem. Sikes is being protected by the verminous powers." Whitebridge put the stem of his pipe between his toothless jaws and tried to light it, but the palsy in his hands was too great. He waited, expectantly, and Peter lit it for him.

"What, uh... " Peter looked down to the first floor of the mansion, where the door to the secret cellar was hidden. "What about our guest? Couldn't she find Sikes? Punish him for his transgressions?"

"Oh, absolutely. Pray tell, son, just how will you get her to do that?"

Peter looked confused. "We convince her to..."

The elder Whitebridge laughed. It was a dry, sickly sounding laugh that descended into a dry, sickly sounding cough. "In twenty years, how many things have we convinced her to do for us, Peter? How many? No. We can't 'convince' her to do anything. All we can do is keep her imprisoned, and hope that she changes her mind."

Peter followed his father toward the master bedroom and helped his father into bed. He winced at the smell of stale urine coming from the man's pajamas, but knew better than to bring it up. As he was settling his father, Peter asked, "Well... can't we try to summon Illyria again?"

"No, you idiot. No! Didn't you learn the first time? Our ceremony wasn't right. It won't ever be right. It will only summon one being, and we have her in a cage already." Whitebridge sneered. "I will be glad to finally see your mother in the hell where I sent her. I'll look at her and spit in her face, that you were the product of her womb..."

Peter watches as his father slowly drifts into sleep. For a moment he dreams of grabbing a pillow and smothering the life out of the nasty old man. But he doesn't. The death curses of true sorcerers are certain and lethal.

Besides, Peter knows he doesn't have long to wait.

**XxxxxxX**

**_December 3, 1946_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

Peter Whitebridge is no longer at all afraid of his father. He is Magus in his own right, and is a skilled sorcerer who controls and commands the dark forces in his own name. He is no longer the little boy who cowered behind the pillars In the summoning room. His father didn't scare him. Not at all. He would never be afraid of a crotchety old grouch who couldn't even muscle up the power for a candle-trick spell anymore.

"Father, are you sure this is a smart thing to do? It isn't safe for a man of your age to get riled up, and you know that..."

"My _age?"_ Michael Whitebridge coughed. "When did you become so insubordinate? So defiant. Open the fucking door already, Peter!"

Peter stood at the bottom of the staircase that led back up to the main hall of the house. The doors to the secret basement and the prisoner was behind him. In front of him was Michael Whitebridge. The old man was in a shoddy, food-stained bathrobe, a white sleeveless t-shirt, and a pair of pale blue boxer shorts that were stained with substances best not thought about. On either side of the old man stood the two shifters, both were-hyenas, that Peter had hired to help keep his father out of trouble. He looked at both of them, and they shrugged.

"You two are useless." Peter looked Michael in the eye. He wasn't afraid of his father, and he wasn't giving in because he was intimidated by the old coot. There wasn't any harm in it, after all, and it would keep the grouch out of his hair. "Fine. Go ahead." In his head, he thought, _Its your funeral._

Peter stood away from the doors. Michael gestured to Fredo... or was it Lincoln? Peter could never tell the two were-hyenas apart. Michael gestured to the man, who opened the door. The other shifter offered an arm, and leaning on his minder, Michael Whitebridge entered the dark chamber.

The old man stormed up to the cage, waving his cane the whole time. In his anger, Michael Whitebridge never noticed that the feminine figure inside the dust-covered glass sphere moved only her eyes. They snapped downward, watching his feet, and when they saw the man stop well-clear of the protective circle, they snapped back up to stare at nothing.

"You! This is all your fault, damn you to hell! All your fault!" Whitebridge raised his cane to point at the thing inside the glass. "You haven't aged a day since we caught you. Not one day in thirty years! And look at me! _LOOK AT ME!"_ The old man screamed at the girl in the ball. Tears began to flow from his eyes. "You could have been free from this prison. All you had to do was cooperate. You could have given me endless power. Immortality."

"But I got old..." Michael Whitebridge was crying openly now. "Why did I have to get so –_snrk_!" Michael Whitebridge clutched at his chest with one hand. The other flung itself outward like a claw. Peter and the minders and Peter rushed forward to help, to keep the man from falling, but it was too late.

Michael Whitebridge was dead.

**XxxxxxX**

Buffy watched her captor's fatal heart attack with a blank expression. She'd watched the man grow old and die without changing her position or even her expression. She thought that when the time came she would revel in the death of the sorcerer who had her trapped, but it was empty. A hollow victory. She was, after all, still in the prison.

_**PATIENCE**_

**XxxxxxX**

**_January 22, 1956_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

"Peter, sweetheart, I have to ask, why in the hell are you still keeping that thing down in the basement? Why?"

In the ten years since his father's death, Peter had changed the entire look of the house. Gone were the mysterious and creepy statues, the bear-skin rugs, the mythical paintings. The black-on-red wallpaper was history, replaced with soft pastels. He had made the house his own.

Except for the hidden basement. Peter had left that room alone.

"Hmm? What did you say, Adam?" He turned to his lover, smiling. The other large change in the house. With his father gone, he had no more reason to hide Adam's existence, and had moved the young man into the house to live with him.

"I asked why you still kept that girl down there."

"What do you expect me to do with her, Adam? Seriously? I can't just let her go." Peter leaned back on his desk and crossed his arms. "She'd slaughter us all."

"But... but what if someone finds out? What about the police? If they were to find her down there, they'd have you up on kidnapping! That's a federal charge! The FBI would get involved!" Adam lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Sorry, love, but I don't think you're up to living in prison."

"Adam, don't be absurd. Please." Peter turned to the desk and began rearranging the papers. They didn't need it, but he was uncomfortable with the subject. "She's been down there for forty years now. In all that time, she hasn't had a bite to eat. She hasn't slept a wink. Hell, I don't think she's even breathing. If she can breathe at all in that damned fish tank. She's got to have used up all the air by now."

"But..." Adam began.

"Look, darling, its like this: she's a being of unspeakable evil and limitless power. What am I supposed to do, just open the door and say, 'Hey, sorry about that, it was all my father's idea, you know? So I'll let you go and you don't strip the flesh from my bones and we'll call it even, right?'" Peter stepped close to Adam and took the younger man in his arms. "Look, I know you don't believe in all of it, but let me tell you, the Order was more than just a way for my father to make a lot of money. Some of it was for real."

Peter kissed Adam lightly on the lips. "For that matter some of it still is. I've seen shit that you would never believe in a thousand years. Things that are still giving me nightmares decades later. Trust me, we're safer just leaving her down there. She can't get out on her own, and we'll both be long gone by the time anyone lets her out. She'll be someone else's problem by then. Okay?"

"If you say so." Adam returned the kiss. "So... what do you think? Trattoria? Get some Italian food?"

"That sounds perfect. Let me grab my coat."

**XxxxxxX**

**_July 13, 1966_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

Buffy – after fifty years, she still thought of herself as Buffy – no longer questioned why she didn't age, just as she no longer questioned her lack of breathing, or eating, or sleeping. She no longer questioned why her skin had golden-yellow patches. She knew. Whatever had brought her here, whatever had torn her free of Heaven had made the Slayer in her more prominent, and as a result, she was no longer sure she qualified as a human being.

She stared at the door, unblinking, barely noticing the guards anymore. Buffy had studied the men guarding her over the years, and these, she admitted, were the least impressive so far. The robes of the Coven were long gone. Now they dressed like hippies and smelled vaguely of sweat and sex and dirt and chemicals. These guards lounged around rather than standing vigilant. Some even had the temerity to stand guard while obviously high on something. Buffy kept careful watch to see if any of them broke the circle, but none of them did. Drug-users they might be, but they weren't overly careless.

They still smelled of hyena. Shifters. Had to have been shifters. The Slayer was the Queen of Beasts, and Buffy knew her own when she smelled them. She remembered back, when the younger Whitebridge had first begun to employ weres as guards, trying to mentally dominate them so that they would release her. According to the presence, it should have been child's play. But the circle blocked her power there, too.

Buffy could hear the tap-tap tap-tap of her captor's cane against the brick floor as he approached the wooden double doors. The boy she had seen come in with her original jailer was now an old man. His hair, once auburn and full-bodied, was now mostly gray and thinning. He walked with a limp, the remnant of some accident or misadventure. Buffy watched as he pulled up a folding chair to sit down. As they always did when someone approached, her eyes flicked downward. The circle was unmarred still. That was all right. If the last fifty years of captivity had taught Buffy nothing else, it had taught her patience. Endless patience.

She watched the old man without moving her eyes, and imagined what his heart might taste like, eaten raw and warm right from his torn and open chest. That was something else Buffy no longer questioned. Where once she might refuse to kill a mortal human, fifty years of having the Slayer as a greater presence in her head had altered Buffy's acceptance of violence against humanity.

"Hello." Her jailer said. "How are... herm. Yes, I suppose that's a stupid question to ask. Sorry"

Buffy didn't react. She hadn't reacted in fifty years.

"You know, you don't need to be in there. You don't. You can leave at any time. The same deal applies. I mean, the one my father offered you, back when you were first summoned." He leaned back in his chair and tapped his cane against his leg. Buffy's eyes flicked downward again, then back up. She could tell the man was getting careless. The presence in her head had assured her that someone would do so, eventually. Sooner or later, the circle would be broken.

He was still talking, but she wasn't paying attention. Not really. Buffy had heard it all before. "Power, immortality, and a binding promise that you won't seek revenge. That's all you need to give me, and you'll be freed.

Buffy kept her silence. Her captor limped away, disappointed.

**XxxxxxX**

Peter was surprised that they still came to him for enlightenment. His new 'acolytes', and he laughs when he thinks of them that way, aren't interested in magic so much as they are interested in expanding their consciousness. So he teaches them about Kundalini Yoga, and Tantric Sex, and Altered States. Nothing too important.

He forbids his followers to use psychedelic drugs, at least at his house. He's too afraid of what might happen if one of them is on guard duty and starts freaking out over a rogue hallucination. But those assigned to guard the basement are supplied with as much coffee and amphetamines as they request, to keep them alert.

He's turned over the business end of the organization to Adam, who he is now often seen with publicly. Adam still doesn't believe in magic. Adam sees the Coven as a way to efficiently separate the amazingly gullible and stupid from their hard-earned cash. And it works. They haven't had this much money rolling in since the 1920s.

While it is never a good time to be a gay man in the United States, the hippy movement and free love give them a cover that lets the two of them move openly for the first time since their relationship began. Peter is head-over-heels with Adam, and Adam is just as much in love with Peter. If it weren't for certain secrets the two share amongst themselves, it would be a perfect relationship.

In his copious spare time, Peter wrote a book about his father, correcting certain rumors about the man, and carefully _not_ correcting certain other rumors. It sold well, for a time, and then was forgotten.

Peter himself has given up on true magic. He no longer associates with it, uses it, or even reads about it. His were-hyena hirelings are all gone now. They were giving him the heebie-jeebies and made his skin crawl.

There was one exception, of course. He couldn't help himself. At least once a day he would spend some time in his father's old library, staring at a single page in the _Vivlio Apagorevmeni Onomata._

Just a single page that he had long-since memorized.

And still the creature in the basement is silent.

**XxxxxxX**

**_September 2, 1976_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

"Why won't you talk to me? You could – you could teach me! You could tell me so many amazing things! I want to learn from you!" Peter sat in his wheelchair in front of the glass globe. It had a covering of dust and dirt over most of its surface, and he could barely see the girl.

The crystal cage could not be cleaned, after all, without breaking the circle.

"You know, I haven't had a good night's sleep in years. Not since the 40s, at least." Peter waved an arm at the sphere. "I bet that's your fault. You've... you've managed to penetrate the circle with your mind somehow and are giving me nightmares." He sat silent for a moment, then whispered, "... nightmares..."

Adam put a hand on Peter's shoulder, but the older man shrugged it off. "I could, uh, I could have you tortured, you know! Don't think I don't know how! I've done it before! I've _killed people_ before! It would be easy!"

"Peter, calm down. Its not good for your heart." Adam again laid his hand on Peter's shoulder. Peter looked up into his lover's face and nodded. The last thing he wanted to do was go out like his father had.

He turned back to the glass sphere. "I hate you. I do. I'm glad we trapped you. You... you're nothing. You're insignificant. You're powerless. Just a funny-colored, naked girl trapped in a fish-tank. That's nothing at all. You're nothing at all." He seemed to run out of breath. "You're nothing at all," he whispered one last time.

Peter stared at the girl in the glass bubble, her image dimmed by the dirt and dust. She still sat unmoving.

"Ah, this is pointless. Adam, take me back up to my office. I have work to do." Peter's face smoothed over. "I do have work to do, right?" Sometimes he lost track of things from day to day.

"Of course you do, love. Of course you do." Adam spun the wheelchair in place and the pair exited the door, heading for the elevator they had secretly installed when walking stairs had become too much for Peter to handle.

"Don't humor me, Adam. I hate it when you humor me.

**XxxxxxX**

For the first time in sixty years, Buffy wasn't staring at the door. She wasn't watching the lover push the old man in the chair out of the door. She was, instead, staring at the circle. She was staring at the streak of muck left behind by the wheelchair's tire. The scattered grains of salt. The broken wax.

_**SOON**_

For the first time in sixty years, Buffy smiled.

**XxxxxxX**

**_March 30, 1980_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

The guards are gone. They'd been gone for little more than an hour. Two of them had been on duty when a third entered the room, spoke to them in whispers Buffy hadn't been able to hear, and the three of them left.

As usual, Buffy heard the man approach before she sees him enter. It's the lover, and he wasn't with the boy.

"I, uh, I don't know why I'm doing this, but I thought it only fair to tell you. Peter died four days ago." The man seemed to collapse on himself for a moment, and had Buffy not been held in a glass cage for sixty-four years, she might have held some sympathy for him. As it was, she wanted to tear his throat out with her teeth.

"I, uh... I'm not going to open the cage. Peter gave me so many warnings about it over the years that I find myself terrified of the thought. Terrified of you... So... I'm sorry." He hung his head, as if he was ashamed of what he was doing. Again, Buffy was less than sympathetic.

"Peter left everything to me, so I guess you're mine now. But I don't want you. I'm... I'm moving away. Far away. Hopefully far enough away that you'd never find me if you escaped." He sighed. "I've updated my will. The land and the house will stay in state as is until I die. I'm not going to be living here, nor will I rent the place, or sell it. No one is going to take care of it. The place will just sit there. It'll only be sold when I'm gone."

Buffy watched him take a deep breath, obviously trying to center himself. "Once I'm gone, the house and the land will be sold off. Who knows. Maybe whoever buys the place will open the cage. Or break it. But I'm not..." She watched as the man knelt, his words trailing off to nothing. He stared at the circle. At the smudged black paint and the scattered salt and the broken red wax.

The man looked up from where he was kneeling, his face mere inches from the glass, and Buffy was suddenly there, staring into his eyes. Her smile was predatory, the smile a cat might have when it has cornered a mouse. The smile of a panther leaping onto the back of an antelope. Her nose is all but pressed against the glass. Buffy could not help it. She stared into his eyes and forced the fact that he was her prey into his mind.

She widened her smile, showing all the points, all the fangs, and the sharp meat-eater teeth. And then she licked the glass.

"Holy fuck! Holy fuck!" He scrambled backward on his ass, terrified by what he just saw, but in a blink of an eye she was right back where she had been sitting motionless since 1916, staring blankly into space, reacting to nothing.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

She watched the lover pick himself off the floor and force himself to calm down. The man took one last look at her, and then ran out of the room in terror.

_**PATIENCE**_

**XxxxxxX**

**_October 7, 1996_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

Buffy had lost track of time. She wasn't worried, as it had happened before. But then, before there had been the guards and the jailers, whose appearance changed over time. The men got older, the clothing styles got closer and closer to what she thought of as 'normal'. Now, though, there was no way to tell how much time had passed.

She sat in the dark, and planned her revenge upon the world. Intellectually, she knew that given what the lover had told her, there was almost no chance of striking back at the Magus, his son, or the lover himself. But, and this she promised herself, once she escaped it would be the last time anyone put her in any sort of cage. She'd carve her way through entire populations before she let that happen again.

But Buffy made many plans for when she was out of the cage. Plans involving ice cream, and shoe shopping, and maybe finding a job. Plans involving relearning how to act human; how to breathe despite not needing to. How to eat again, how to sleep again, how to talk again. How to fuck and walk and sneeze and shit and puke again. How to be with people without seeing them as victims or opponents. The entirety of the human experience, she wanted it back.

She doubted she was a Slayer anymore – other than being the ultimate embodiment of _the _Slayer, that is; she'd been tied to the entity in the back of her head long enough to learn certain things about it – but Buffy knew that she likely wouldn't completely give up the lifestyle. She hoped to find a place in the world for herself despite the physical and mental changes she'd been forced to undergo. Buffy hoped beyond hope that her friends were still there when she went looking for them. She missed her friends.

Buffy missed her mommy the most, though. She missed her mommy something awful. And she hoped that her mommy could accept that she wasn't human anymore.

_**QUIET**_

Instantly Buffy cleared her mind of all of her plans, all her thoughts, all her reminiscences. She waited, knowing the presence would...

_**LISTEN**_

It was the sound of machinery. It was muffled, but not distant. Something was moving above her. Something large, powered by an engine. As she continued to listen, she could hear wood creaking and smashing and tearing. _Someone is tearing down the house, _she thought to herself.

_**YES**_

_**PREPARE**_

Buffy stood, staring at the brick ceiling through the distortion of the glass. Plaster and mortar were falling onto the sphere, loosened by the activity above her. If she still breathed, Buffy knew she'd be holding it. More plaster rained down. There was a scraping sound from above her, accompanied by a growl from the engine-driven whatever it was.

Abruptly, there was a rain of loose bricks as a hole opened in the ceiling. First one, then eight, then two dozen. For a moment Buffy's hopes soared, but it was for naught. The bricks bounced off of the crystal shell, making it ring like a gong but not causing any damage.

From above came voices.

"_... what the hell was that ringing... sounded like a bell... move the backhoe off... think we've got another cellar... not on the plans... its there all right... hey, I think I found... get the inspector over here, pronto... look, its a staircase... "_

Buffy knew that the time had come. She leaned on the glass. She pounded on it. Her need to be out of the cage made her press against it, but she still couldn't get through. Her efforts were useless.

Buffy's head snapped up and she looked toward the door. She heard voices, at least two, maybe three men. The people with the engine had discovered the hidden stairway. They'd find her any moment.

_**CHANGE**_

_What? Change? Change what?_ She couldn't figure out what the presence wanted. She was suddenly desperate to escape.

_**CAMOUFLAGE**_

And suddenly Buffy knew what it meant. She took a calming breath and willed herself to change. Her hair took on a normal blonde color, and grew shaggy and unkempt. Her eyes grew round instead of cat-like oval. Her fangs retracted. Buffy concentrated and the gold patches were replaced by cuts, bruises, and scratches. She was suddenly smudged with dirt and grime. Buffy collapsed in a heap just at the men opened the doors. Feigning weakness, she flapped her hand against the glass spasmodically.

"What the fuck is this?" The first voice, deep and husky.

The second voice. Still male. Higher pitched than the first. "I dunno, but its not on the plans."

Buffy felt something touch the glass; there was a quaver, a vibration in the crystal, as if something was rubbing it. "Oh shit! There's a girl in there! Get... get something... we need to get her out of there! Look at her! I think she's hurt!" The first voice was almost to panic mode. Buffy kept her eyes closed, but heard a frenetic repeated impact on the glass. "Hey, hey you, girl! You okay? Hang on! We're getting you out!"

"Rick, step back! Get back!" A third voice. Deeper than the second, lighter than the first. Buffy heard something impact the crystal. Something heavy. She could feel the glass vibrate beneath her, and heard the thing crack.

The second voice sounded again, but from far away. "... there's a girl down trapped here, god damn it! Call an ambulance... call the fucking ambulance, now!"

There was another impact, and a third, and a fourth. On the fourth the cracking sound turned into the sound of glass shattering. Buffy kept her eyes closed and didn't move. She could hear the men moving around. "Watch the glass! Watch the glass." She could hear the shattered crystal swept away, then two large, warm hands grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Watch it. Don't cut her on the edge there. Careful!" Buffy was pulled, slowly, inch by inch, out of the glass bubble and into the arms of one of the men. She still hadn't opened her eyes, but Buffy could feel his warmth.

She heard his heart beat. And most importantly, she could smell him. He smelled delightful. He smelled like... like smoky barbecue and cherries and chocolate. He smelled like a meal.

She shook her head at the thought, and instinctively put one arm over the man's shoulder. She forced her arm to move slowly, gently, as it would if she were truly injured. Buffy opened her eyes, slowly, and looked up at her rescuer. He was a huge man, and her first impression was that she'd seen him in a movie once, acting belligerent and getting his ass kicked by John Claude Van Damme or Arnold Schwarzeneggar. The man had that sort of tough-guy face. He had long blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail, and a goatee the same color. His eyes were a beautiful, expressive green, and they held nothing in them but concern and kindness for her, entirely at odds to his tough-guy look.

"Help me," she whispered.

He looked down at her and nodded. The man shifted his grip on her until she was being held in the bridal carry. "Don't worry, little girl, we'll help you. Don, gimme your shirt. Cover her up so nobody sees her like this. She don't need nobody gawkin' at her, hurt and all."

Buffy closed her eyes and played the weakling. She'd allow these men to play the hero and rescue the little girl. It would be easier to escape from the ambulance, anyway.

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime noir stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Pendleton Legacy_ by August Derleth is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second:** This chapter was molded after and is an homage to "Sleep of the Just", the first issue of _The Sandman_, a comic book written by author Neil Gaiman and published in 1988. I created this homage with the full knowledge and consent of Mr. Gaiman, who after reading the rough draft thought that I was off to a brilliant start and made me promise to send him a copy of the finished story.


	2. The Nameless Other

**The Nameless Other**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Since there are always those who would burn those who they perceive as witches, many true magicians adopted new garb, avoiding recognition by disguising their plumage. Often the best hiding place is in plain view." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

**_December 21, 1918_**

**_Chicago, Illinois_**

_Luther Black smiled at the young woman in the very slinky red dress; her elbow-length gloves and opera mask matched the color of her dress She was the mistress of a local Senator, no older than seventeen and probably rescued from her daddy's farm and sent to accompany the State Senator in his duties as a 'secretary'. Inwardly, he grimaced at all the ostrich feathers attached to her simply pillbox hat; women of this decade had no style at all. He'd be hard-pressed to remember her name, but that was true of pretty much all of his 'guests'. He held his tongue at her inane prattle, instead merely giving the appropriately timed noises of affirmation. A few repetitions of 'really' and 'yes' and 'I understand' and he was quite able to slip through the so-called 'conversation' with the bibbling quim easily and with minimal fuss._

_The cream of the crop of Chicago's elite were here at his party on this, the longest night of the year. He needed the extra hours of darkness to accomplish his goals. The blasphemous events that would occur this night would set the course of the rest of his life, and would determine the fate of the world itself._

_This masquerade party was a cover for the first official meeting of the Novus Ordo Magorum et Aeternorum Ducum, a trendy secret society to which only the best and brightest, not to mention richest, of New York's society were invited. Mystic societies and occult brotherhoods were all the rage. Each claimed to have some secret knowledge of the ancients, and each were busily relieving the credulous and the gullible of their hard-won wealth._

"_If you'll excuse me, my dear, I simply must go and greet the Governor. He was kind enough to attend, and I would be a poor host if I didn't have a chat with him." He patted the vacuous cow on the arm and gave her his warmest smile. The enchantment that he imparted to her at his touch, child's play really, would mean he'd have at least some entertainment after the party was over._

_Black extended a hand as he approached the Honorable Frank Orren Lowden. "Governor, so glad you could attend. I know you're not long in the city, so I simply had to have you at my party." The chance to ensnare one of the most politically powerful men in the state was too much for the sorcerer to resist._

_Normally, Luther Black disdained the showy nonsense of these mystic secret societies. They were pale imitations of the Covenant of the Fanged Moon, the mystic brotherhood that had once held his loyalty. It was nothing knew. Throughout history, the power of the Covenant had ebbed and surged, rippling through humanity on both a conscious and subconscious level. Such ripples inspired cheap copies of the real thing. But these copies were nothing more than monkeys imitating the actions of their owners. Despite this, they were gaining popularity among the wealthy and the elite._

_And Luther Black could turn this to his own advantage. He started his own mystic order and gave it a name that would appeal to these arrogant idiots who now surrounded them: the New Order of Magi and Eternal Rulers. He would drain these wealthy morons dry and use their money to fund his true goal: gaining the power of the Kings of Edom._

_Of course, if he happened to find a true diamond in the rough among the wastes-of-breath that the New Order attracted, someone who showed a true talent for magic, and a true talent for evil, Black would happily recruit that person as an acolyte of the shining darkness._

_Waste not, want not, after all._

**XxxxxxX**

**_October 7, 1996_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

They all heard it. All of them.

Throughout the city, like the tolling of a great bell, a sound that was not sound rang out. It covered the lycanthropic population of Saint Louis like a great blanket. Alphas, Betas, and Gammas. Even those whose beasts were solitary and followed no leaders. As one, they turned toward the source of the sound that was not a sound. No matter what they were doing. If they were working, they paused in their labor. If they were sleeping, they awoke.

No matter who they were, or what they were doing, they turned toward the source of the sound that was not sound and listened. Not for very long. Not for very long at all. Just long enough to notice that they were hearing something they were not hearing.

It was a call, a voice that spoke of something basic in their being. Something hidden, yet not hidden, that seemed to finally be distributed after being horded away for so long. A voice to be trusted. A voice to be listened to. The voice didn't say anything. It was merely sounding from the deep, as if alerting everyone to it being there.

And after this long moment of listening, the voice quieted. All of the lycanthropes returned to what they were doing as if they had never been interrupted. All of them carried the memory of the sound that they did not hear, but none of them thought about it. It was ephemeral, as if a phantasm that could be ignored.

Not that they ignored it. They merely dismissed it, storing it in their subconscious until it was time to bring it forth again.

Their actions, of course, did not go unnoticed.

**XxxxxxX**

"Wow. Of all the ties I've ever seen you wear, Zerbrowski, I've got to say, that one's one of a kind." Anita Blake looked the man up and down. Rumpled suit in a light tan, yellow shirt, and a tie that was eye-blazingly busy. It actually took her a few moments to realize that the tie was actually printed with Van Gogh's "Starry Night."

"Better gird those pretty loins of yours, Anita. This one is a weird one." Detective Zerbrowski ignored the comments regarding his fashion sense and leered at the animator-cum-vampire executioner-cum-mystic consultant as she walked into the wreckage of the house. "Here, they're going to yell at you if you don't put this on." He handed her an orange hard-hat, then tapped the one he was wearing.

"You're kidding, right?" She looked at the hat, then looked around. "There's no ceiling. This building doesn't have a fucking ceiling. And I have to wear a hard-hat? What's supposed to fall on my head? Sunlight?"

"Yep. Sucks, doesn't it?" He shrugged, and in doing so actually managed to uncrimple the shoulder of his suit. "Come on. You're going to love this."

"Doubt it. My weird shit quota for the day's already been filled. Did you hear what happened with the shifters this morning?" Blake put the hard-hat on and followed him.

"Heard something happened, but since nobody got hurt, nobody called us, and if no one calls us about it, I generally let it slide." Zerbrowski chuckled. "Keeps the workplace stress down."

"Sure it does. Sure. So what's the situation here?" She followed him over to the exposed staircase. Beside it was a square hole in the floor. "And what the hell's up with the hole?"

"Elevator. Old style elevator. Like the kind they used in tenements in the 30s. The car's locked at the bottom. We'll take the stairs." He waved her forward, about as gentlemanly as he could get. "Apparently they were built into the walls and were then disguised so no one knew they were there."

"A hidden staircase and a secret elevator. Where do they lead?"

"A hidden cellar. You'll love it." Zerbrowski gave her a grinning leer, taking a moment while they were in relative close quarters to look down the front of her shirt.

Blake rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything. By now she was used to the detective's antics. "You were telling me the situation?"

"Yeah, spoil the fun. The crew tearing down the house started the job today. They were supposed to take it down to the foundation, seal up any cellars the building had, then start reinforcing and widening the foundation. They're putting in a SaveLots." Anita grimaced. She hated the big box stores. For that matter, so did Jean-Claude She wondered how it was that anyone got the permits to build one of those monstrosities in Saint Louis if the Master of the City objected.

"Anyway," Zerbrowski continued. "They had three backhoes rampaging through the place when one of them broke through into a hidden cellar. Another uncovered the stairway down. They Crew Chief pulled the heavy machinery out of the way and sent three guys downstairs to see what they might have to deal with, and they discovered a girl in a bubble."

"A girl? In a bubble? What do you mean by -" She stopped speaking the moment she saw the remains of the crystal sphere. Most of it was whole, but one side was shattered, opening the interior to the air. It sat on a ring of some kind of reddish wood that had been inscribed with a myriad of mystic symbols, and hose feet were carved into the paws of a dragon. "Ah, right. Bubble. They found a girl in this thing? Where's she now?"

"Yeah. She's on her way to Mercy." Zerbrowski shook his head. "Real bad case. She was cut up and beat up something awful. Could barely move when the construction guys found her. They had to smash the glass with some crowbars to get her out. One of us will likely drop by later on once, you know, the doctors are done with her. Tammy there guessed she was being used as a sacrifice for something nasty."

Tammy Reynolds, RPIT's active duty witch, was crouching inside the glass bubble. She was moving her hands along the glass with her eyes closed. Beside the big glass bubble stood Detective Storr, the commander of the RPIT team. Anita Blake stepped up next to him, still watching Detective Reynolds move inside the glass ball.

"Blake. Nice of you to join us. I hate this mystic hoo-doo shit."

"Yeah, me too." Storr rolled his eyes at that. Everyone knew Anita Blake was hip-deep in the 'mystic hoo-doo shit' and loved it. "So, uh... maybe I missed something, but how did the girl get in the glass ball? I don't see any openings except for that one." Blake pointed to the area now missing due to the efforts of the construction workers.

"You noticed that too?" Tammy Reynolds opened her eyes and stood. "Okay, from what I can tell the glass was enchanted to keep things in, not keep things out. From the inside, you could probably have set off a nuke and not scratched it." She rapped her knuckles on the crystal. "This thing's old. Like close to a century. Its been sitting her since the thirties at least. Maybe the twenties."

Reynolds crawled out of the bubble, careful to avoid the sharp edges. "I have to say this thing is getting to me. It feels... off. And I don't mean the usual demon-infested chilblain make your brain try to turn itself off thing. I mean, there's something about this entire place that simply offends my sense of reality and my basic sense of magic is making me want to run screaming."

"What is this place, anyway?" Anita looked around at the wreckage. Now that it had been exposed to the light of day, the hidden cellar looked fairly harmless, except for the big broken glass ball. There was a menacing feeling coming from it that spoke to her senses. All of her senses. It was tweaking her necromantic power, the power she shared with Jean-Claude, and most especially her links to the wolves and the leopards. The power she felt through the links to her weres was sitting up and howling at the hidden moon.

"Its the old Whitebridge house," Zerbrowski said. From his tone, he obviously thought that would explain everything.

"And that means?"

"Right. Forgot you're not originally from here." Zerbrowski took a deep breath. "There was this guy, name of Michael Whitebridge. Rumor has it he was into demons and magic and weird sex. Its a bit of a local legend around here. I'm surprised your vampire buddies haven't told you."

"No. None of them have told me anything." Anita thought about it. "In fact, the only time I remember anyone mentioning anything to do with a Whitebridge was some discussion about... ah. Okay, that makes sense."

All the cops had an inquisitive look on their face.

"Jean-Claude was once looking into acquiring a property to raise horses. You know, as a business investment. Someone mentioned that it was too bad the Whitebridge estate had been bought by some store chain." Anita shook her head and almost laughed. "He said he'd be more willing to walk into the sunlight naked than come within a mile of the Whitebridge property."

"Well, you're looking at it. This is the Whitebridge property. According to the stories, back before about 1950 when his son took over, there were regular orgies and drug parties going on here. Supposedly a lot of black magic." Reynolds shuddered. "I can tell you now that we've found evidence that the black magic part was true."

"What happened after 1950?"

"Old Man Whitebridge died. His son took over. You know how it goes." Dolph Storr muttered. "This house has been empty for close to a decade and a half, since Whitebridge Junior died, I guess. That would explain why someone snuck in and put their devil-worship stuff here. No one would notice if they did it in an abandoned house."

"You're wrong about that, Dolph. This isn't new stuff someone brought in. From the looks of it, this stuff's been here for, I dunno... sixty? Seventy years maybe? This isn't new. And its intricate. Someone took a lot of time and effort putting this fish-tank together." Reynolds circled it. "From a strictly magical standpoint, its almost a work of art."

"Jesus, look at this..." Blake crouched to look at the base the globe was sitting on. "You've got the standard assortment of hermetic sigils for containment here, plus magical strengthening, plus more containment. This amount of protective containment is simply insane."

Reynolds was nodding. "You got that right. Have you seen the protective circle? Its not one of the seven variations on the Seal of Solomon. In fact, I think it might be the Seal of Danzalthar. And they backed it up with a Witches Collar made of blood-laced wax and an inner circle of salt. They _really _didn't want what was in there to get out."

"You make it sound like they were trying to hold a Tyrannosaurus Rex in that bubble." Dolph snorted.

Tammy Reynolds shrugged. "Could have been. The demonic equivalent. Though the interior residue doesn't feel strictly demonic. Its weird. Something that I've never seen before. Its like, demonic, but not demonic. Like almost demonic. No, that's not it. Not quite. Its like. Shit, I have no idea. Old? Evil? Other. That's what I felt. Some nameless... other." Reynolds rubbed her own arms, like she was suddenly cold. Gives me the shakes just thinking about it."

Anita Blake's face fell. "Wait, you mean you felt this demonic taint on the inside of the glass?"

"Sort of. It was not quite demonic, but definitely something dark. Something hostile. Pretty strong, too, like whatever was in here had..." Reynolds got it, suddenly. Here eyes got really large. "Shit. Dolph, we got a problem. Someone needs to track down the ambulance that girl was taken away in."

"What?" The leader of the RPIT team pushed himself away from the wall. "Why?"

Blake had already pulled her cellphone and was swiftly punching numbers. She had to let Richard know so he could warn his people what sort of creature was crawling around town, and the contact Jean-Claude so that the vampires were on alert. Anita cursed the fact that Jean-Claude way lying dead in his coffin. "Because that girl wasn't a girl, Dolph!"

"What was she then?"

"A demon!"

**XxxxxxX**

"Whitebridge. Bien sur. It would be Whitebridge, naturellement." Jean-Claude threw the handful of photographs of the hidden cellar onto the table. "That man was a menace when he was alive, and even now, sixty years after he est decede, he continues to bring trouble to my city." The Master of the City looked to his Human Servant. "So it is truly a demon, then?"

"It almost has to be. Given what we saw? I mean, look at the thing." Anita Blake pointed to the pictures. "That glass bubble is a fucking demon cage, and a strong one. Some time in the past, Michael Whitebridge, or his son, or one of his people summoned up a demon and kept it hidden in the basement for years. At least fifteen or sixteen years, maybe longer. Could have been a lot longer." She turned to Jean-Claude. "When did you say he built that house?"

"Je ne connais pas la reponse a cette question , precisement ma petite." The vampire shook his head. He spoke in French out of habit, not really thinking about it. It was a sign of just how stressed he was. "Apologies. I don't know, really. It was already built when I came to Saint Louis in 1909."

"Didn't you tell me you'd been in America since since 1815?"

"Oui, mon raton du roi. But prior to 1909 I was in New York City, or Philadelphia, or Boston." The master vampire shrugged. "I even dwelt in several cities in Georgia before arriving in my city."

"Ah." Rafael nodded. "Sorry, I misunderstood." The rat-king was quiet. "So this thing could have been sitting in the basement of the Whitebridge house since the turn of the 20th Century or even earlier. What would be the point of that? I mean, why trap it?"

"Power, what else?" Asher answered.

"But wouldn't you, like, have to let the thing out of its jail cell for it to be able to give you power?" Richard asked. Again Anita bristled. She couldn't help it.

"Oui, mon lupe. One would have to release the creature for it to serve. Which tells us that it was not cooperative with its gaoler." Asher picked up another photo. "I'm surprised by something. A few somethings, in fact"

"Ah? And that would be?" Jean-Claude asked.

"Why did the demon not kill the construction workers who freed it? Why did it need the ambulance? Why did it not kill the medics in the ambulance? Would that not be in keeping with the nature of such an evil creature. Why did it disguise itself as a helpless girl?"

"Wasn't a disguise. Demons are incorporeal on Earth, remember? They can manipulate things magically, but unless they possess a mortal, they don't have a body." Anita Blake pulled a notebook from her pocket. "According to the description, the girl they pulled from the bubble was blonde, no more than five-foot-two, weighed less than about a hundred pounds, emaciated, dirty, and looked like she'd been beaten and abused. The perfect look to generate sympathy from a bunch of roughneck construction workers. Which means that the body it was possessing actually looked like that."

"But how would you know for sure, Anita?" It was a reasonable question, even if the fact that it was Richard Zeeman asking made her bristle. Of course, at this point Anita would likely bristle if Richard made a comment about how blue the sky was. "I mean, how do you know it was possessing the girl?"

"Simple mathematics." Anita realized she was going to have to elaborate. "Okay, if you want to summon a demon, you're going to need a blood sacrifice. Basically, you have to kill something to bring the demon into this world. For something small, a nuisance imp that can hurt people and break things, but isn't all that powerful, you can get away with sacrificing an animal. But..."

"But for something bigger you need a person, right?" Rafael swiped at his eyes. "And the more powerful the demon, the, uh, the more powerful the person you'd need?"

"Right. Or you could do the same thing with more than one less-powerful sacrifices." Blake looked at the picture again. "For this sort of monster? I'd say you'd have to sacrifice at least eight or nine regular people, maybe five if you were using witches or vampires or shifters."

"And the math applies how?"

"The girl was in the globe and she was alive. That means she wasn't a sacrifice, she was a vessel. She was what they were putting the demon into when they pulled it into this world." Blake shrugged. "How do you think she survived a hundred years in an air-tight glass bubble?"

"That... oh God!" Zeeman's eyes got big. "Do you think she was a volunteer, or did they force her to..."

"In almost all possessions, Monsieur Zeeman, the vessel does not wish to be possessed." Asher's face, what could be seen of it, was a landscape of unpleasant emotions.

Jean-Claude put a hand to his face, hiding his expression. The other people at the table looked shell-shocked, angry, terrified, and everything in between. The Master of the City looked from one person to the other, sitting around the conference table: Asher, Damien, Rafael, Richard Zeeman, Micah, and even the hermit-like Narcissus were all here. Upon his awakening, Anita had told Jean-Claude that she was calling a real council of war, and that's exactly what she put together.

"So what do you think it'll do?" Richard Zeeman was leaning back in his seat, staring at the ceiling. "I mean, what are we talking about, here, damage-wise?"

"What will it do? I can't tell you for sure, but I'm betting its going to involve a lot of death, destruction, and fear." Anita nodded to the photographs. "Given the amount of containment magic on that thing, Whitebridge and his people were expecting to keep the demonic counterpart to Gojira in that damned cage. I don't know if what ended up in the globe really was that bad, but they were prepared for it. So if its really that powerful, then the entire city is in peril from this thing."

"What do you mean, the entire city?" Narcissus's voice was high-pitched and quavering. The were-hyena was obviously frightened by the mere thought of the demon.

Asher was nodding. "Almost any demon is terrible." He pronounced it 'tair-eebleh". "But the protection magic used here would mean a demon of the highest order. A prince of Hell, perhaps even one of the Fallen itself."

"The Fallen?" Again, the question was from Narcissus.

"Oui. Une ange dechu." Asher looked up. "One of those that directly rebelled against God almighty and was cast into perdition for their arrogant blasphemy. And I assure you, if one such as that was trapped by the late Monsieur Whitebridge and only now released, no one is safe. No one in Saint Louis. Perhaps no one in Missouri." He shrugged. "It is even possible that the danger could include everyone in Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee... perhaps the continent. Or the world."

"Oh Christ, tell me you are joking." Richard Zeeman was staring wide-eyed at Asher.

"I am not joking , Monsieur Zeeman, but Christ would be the appropriate power to turn to in a time such as this. If this is a demon prince, or worse one of the Fallen, there is almost nothing we can do to drive it back into the pit. Surement, your usual tactics when fighting enemies of the wolves, in this case, will only get your wolves killed."

"Not to create a panic, but something just occurred to me. You know what happened this morning, yes?" Rafael looked around the table. "Seemed to have affected all all the shifters in the city simultaneously?"

"Oh God, yes." Narcissus's voice was almost a shriek. "I felt like I was sleepwalking while I was awake. I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but for me it was like watching someone that looked like me stand up and walk around while I just floated there."

Zeeman and Micah both nodded. "Yeah, same here."

"Okay, well, do you think this thing had anything to do with it?" Rafael picked up a picture, glanced at it, and tossed it back to the table.

"There is, of course, no way to know, mon raton du roi. But it is possible."

Everyone was quiet, contemplating the morning's events.

"So... what do we do about this thing?" Richard Zeeman stood and rubbed his eyes. Even before he stopped, he was pacing near his chair.

"We need to call in some exorcists. Every priest, rabbi, and imam in the city – hell, we'll talk to the guys who run the ashrams, for that matter – they'll all be needed to drive this thing out of the world." Anita Blake sighed. "Guns aren't going to cut it. Hell, if this thing is as powerful as it seemed, canons won't cut it. People are going to die, and probably by the hundreds or maybe thousands. And if it cannot be trapped and forced back into hell, then there may be no stopping it at all."

There was a sudden rush of babble while everyone tried to speak all at the same time.

**XxxxxxX**

As eventful as Buffy's day was, it was now winding down, and she was relaxing.

Buffy sighed in contentment as she chewed on the slider. Xander always said that it was the little things that made it all worth it, and boy was he right. In this case, it was a bag full of White Castle burgers. White Castles were small enough that she could almost shove an entire slider in her mouth at once, but she didn't do that. This was the first actual food she'd eaten in eighty years, and she wanted to savor every second of eating it. She knew it had to just be hunger, but these crappy little hamburgers were like ambrosia to her.

The bag of hamburgers sat on her stomach as she ate, reclining on the shitty little bed in the shitty little hotel room. The room itself was in a shitty little fleabag hotel whose clientele was mostly made up of streetwalkers plying their trade. It was the size of a closet, but it did have a bed, and a lock on the door, and bars on the windows. She could finally relax for a little while. She swallowed the last bite of her burger, licked the wrapper clean of excess grease and juice, and then started on the next one.

The dark presence in the back of her head wasn't particularly satisfied with hamburgers, but in Buffy's opinion, the dark presence was going to have to live with disappointment.

Take the guys in the ambulance, for instance. Buffy had left the ambulance in the first public parking lot she could find, once she reached downtown. She'd left the two men sleeping in the back of the ambulance, tied to their own gurney. Physically they weren't truly harmed. A little bruising here or there was all they suffered. Physically. Their dreams, however, would be forever filled with dark images of teeth and claws and bloody fangs. Psychologically, they were far from well, but that wasn't really her fault, now was it? She made sure the ambulance was locked up, placed the keys behind the front left tire, and walked away. As she left she'd altered her camouflage, going from a naked and blonde girl to a tall, thin black girl in blue jeans and a t-shirt.

She'd been hungry since escaping the crystal prison. The dark presence had suggested, almost insisted, in fact, that she eat the two ambulance attendants. It would be a convenient way to dispose of them and would be much easier than hunting up something to eat later. But Buffy demurred. She was surprised that her objections had nothing to do with cannibalism taboo or the horror of eating human meat; for some reason the idea of chowing down on a person just didn't bring up feelings of disgust and horror anymore.

It was more the realization that the last thing Buffy wanted to do was become hunted herself, and nothing would draw the eyes of the authorities faster than someone dining on a first-responder. If she really felt like hunting, killing, and eating a human being, there'd be plenty of time to do that _after_ she knew for sure that the cops weren't going to be chasing her for stealing an ambulance and kidnapping a couple of EMTs. And besides, there would have been all that blood, and Buffy was too tired to deal with the mess it would have caused. There was no way in hell she was going to bathe in this shit-hole's communal bathroom, after all.

She'd already figured out that it was close; it had vampires and werewolves and monsters and magic, but in her mind, it simply tasted too different to be her home. She'd spent a decade wondering what _It tasted too different _ meant, and how an entire world could taste like anything, but eventually let it go as unimportant. But the knowledge that she was far, far away from home guided her in formulating a plan.

Walking away from the ambulance, Buffy's plan had been simple. _First, money. Second, food. Third, clothing. Fourth, a place to stay. _Of course, if Buffy was honest with herself she didn't really need the clothing. But that wasn't the point. Her ability to camouflage herself was handy, but it wasn't as physically satisfying to Buffy as actually dressing up in nice clothes and shoes, especially when combined with a great hairdo. And she didn't want to just sleep outside, though she knew the elements wouldn't bother her. She had survived for nearly eighty years without eating, so she wasn't going to starve, but eating a decent meal at a decent restaurant once in a while was just the thing to lift a person's spirits.

Buffy was determined to recreate as much of her human existence as possible. The problem was, she was naked and without tangible resources, and Buffy decided to be honest enough with herself about the situation to know that she faced several problems.

The only people she'd met were either mad sorcerers intent on her imprisonment, or else perfect strangers who would most likely freak out completely if they found out she wasn't quite as human as she looked. Sure, the construction guys had helped her, and so did the ambulance guys, but would they had been so helpful if she hadn't hidden her tiger-like eyes and her golden skin and her fangs? Buffy bet that they'd not only be unhelpful, they'd be downright hostile. So there was no one she could ask for help.

The _food, clothing, shelter _parts of her plan all required the _money_ part of her plan. And she had no ready source of income. At least not yet. So in order to make _money, food, clothing, shelter _work she was going to have to start by stealing the money she needed until she found a job that paid well enough for her to live on. This thought hadn't made her very happy at all, but she felt she could live with it, as long as she stole it from the right – or rather the wrong – sort of people. Criminals. People who'd never go to the police and report her for robbing them.

And this was another reason why she chose not to eat the EMTs: they were just so helpful. When she questioned them about the city, and where she could get what she wanted, they answered her questions quickly and with a minimum of screaming in abject terror and despair. First they gave her directions to the wrong part of town, and from there to the really wrong part of town.

Buffy had wandered through the area at random, looking for likely targets. It took her a lot longer than she thought. Apparently all those TV movies about troubled youths, the ones that showed drug dealers and hookers on every single street corner lied to her. When she thought about it, though, she wondered why she thought that television dramatizations would be accurate. For the first hour or so, the only thing the wandering had confirmed was that the bad part of Saint Louis was nothing like the bad parts of Sunnydale or Los Angeles.

One odd thing she noticed almost immediately. The area she was in was almost literally crawling with vampires and lycanthropes. At nearly every inhabited and abandoned building she passed, and more than a few of the businesses, she felt the presence of a monster. And yet the regular people who lived and worked in these buildings didn't seemed troubled by the monsters among them.

It was dusk by the time she found the kid selling dope on the street corner. Mugging him had gained her close to three hundred dollars. Finding a pimp netted her another thousand. But the real find had been the vampire, his were-boar bodyguard, and his stable of girls. The pair had been operating out of a van in a vacant lot. At first Buffy had thought that she'd come across a vampire pimp and his rolling brothel, but it turned out to be something worse.

She'd approached the van from the dark side of the street, hoping to surprise the vampire, but he'd somehow sensed her coming. Apparently Buffy was giving off some strange vibe, because not only had he not tried to menace her away, he'd started a sort of sales pitch.

"Hey, pretty lady. Nice night for a stroll, isn't it? I know what you need and I got it right here. Young, fresh, and disease free, right from the tap." The vampire had motioned one of the girls forward; the young lady in question had pulled her hair out of the way and tilted her head so that her neck was exposed as Buffy approached. Even in the dim illumination of the streetlight, Buffy could see the scars of many sets of fangs. "Fifty bucks a pop for a nice long sip."

He actually seemed friendly. Buffy could tell just looking at him that the vampire was young. Maybe a century at most, perhaps slightly less. He wasn't a master, and he'd never be a master. She drew close and the vampire's attitude had changed. "Oh... uh... sorry about that. We don't do business with wannabe's and shifters. So, uh, beat it. Put it away, Darla." As the girl who'd been presenting her neck straightened up, the vampire had turned to the van and shrugged in Buffy's direction.

That's when the muscle made his appearance. The were-boar was tall and muscled like a body builder. His hair was pulled back in a corn-rowed mullet, and the ends were beaded. His massive arms were as tattooed as a Yakuza soldier's. A t-shirt from some band she'd never heard of was desperately close to tearing, stretched as it was across his chest. Motorcycle boots completed the ensemble. The man was menace in a pair of blue jeans, and the sneer that he gave Buffy as she got closer made it obvious that he considered her an appetizer and not a meal.

Buffy couldn't help it. She actually giggled. She immediately labeled the muscle _Pigboy._

"Something funny, bitch?" The bodyguard stepped toward her, looming. "Boss said for you to hit the bricks. Beat it before I break something off of you."

"Relax, Pigboy. Chill. I'm just here to talk to your boss." Buffy laid a hand on the bodyguard's chest and there was a flow of energy between them. The thug's arms twitched, like he was going to do something, but he abruptly fell to his knees. He stayed there for only a moment before his head rocked back and his arms shot out away from his sides as if lightning was shooting through his body.

"M-my queen! My queen! My queen..." It was a mumbled chant directed at no one. The were-boar was staring up at the unforgiving stars as if they were talking to him. The pupils of his eyes widened to almost block out the irises, and the whites of his eyes were suddenly pink as multitudes of capillaries burst. He began to cry even as his face fell into a look of almost religious ecstasy. "my-my q-queeeen... my queen... ma-hah-my que-ah-en."

"I know. Shhhh..." Buffy smiled kindly at the lycanthope. She caressed the side of the bodyguard's face as she passed on her way to the vampire, and at his touch he shuddered and sighed as if enjoying a magnificent if painful orgasm.

The vampire whirled on her, his eyes wide. "What the fuck, Bruno?"

"Thank you for telling me his name. Seems like a nice guy. So, what's your name?" Buffy stepped between the still ecstatic shifter and the vampire.

"Fuck you, that's my name!"

_**PREY**_

The girls and the vampire jumped, suddenly, as if something had leapt at them out of the shadows at them.

The vampire swung at her with all the power and speed vampires were capable of, obviously expecting to easily crush her skull. Buffy caught his fist in her left hand and held it. "Look, vampire, here's the deal..." She ducked his other fist, and his nose exploded in a spray of blood and bone from the jab she threw in response. He rocked back, obviously stunned. The vampire dropped onto his butt at Buffy's feet. She hadn't lost her grip on the vamp's fist, and twisted it a bit to put him in a more painful position.

She held the vamp on the ground from the pressure on his fist. Buffy glanced at the girls, but they were all cowering, watching her like they were bait fish and she was a shark. Darla, the one who'd offered herself to Buffy, had backed away until she tripped over the lip of the van's bed.

Buffy tilted her head to the side quickly. "Hit the road, ladies. You're taking the rest of the night off. Beat it." They ran like the very hounds of Hell itself were snapping at their feet.

Buffy slapped the vampire. Its eyes, surrounded by bruises from its smashed up nose, cleared. "On your feet, Fuck You. Come on." She grabbed him by the collar with her free hand and pulled, forcing him to stand. "Up you go. This is easier if you stand up."

"You're going to regret this..." The vampire's voice was slurred. He was clearing up fast, but Buffy's punch had seriously concussed him. "You're going to regret this. Liv won't... won't stand..."

"Shut up." Buffy punched him again. His head snapped backward and he would have fallen if she hadn't caught him.

"Liv is who? A vampire?" The bloodsucker nodded, vaguely. "You work for her?" Another nod. "Okay, that's cool. Now... give me your cash." Buffy began squeezing the fist, grinding the vampire's bones together. He squealed and almost immediately began digging in his back pocket. The roll of bills he produced was suitably large. "You got a wallet, too, Fuck You?" The vampire went digging again and handed it to her. "Is this everything?" She gave the fist another squeeze. "Is this everything?"

The vampire almost screamed. "In the van! In the van, under the seat! Fuck, stop already, please! Stop."

"Okay." Buffy's free hand extended into a large lion-like paw with two-inch long claws. One swipe and the vampire's head had bounced under the van. Without pausing, Buffy dropped the body and climbed into the van. Under the passenger seat was a metal lock-box, the kind people used for garage sales and bake sales to hold the take. It was filled with cash. Enough cash that she didn't have to risk robbing anyone else. She nodded and grabbed it. Once outside the van, she tossed the still bleeding body into the back of the van and shut the doors behind it.

The were-boar was right where Buffy had left him, staring into space, crying from bloodshot eyes, chanting about his Queen.

Buffy knelt in front of him. His head was still lifted toward the heavens, but his eyes followed her movement. They were shaky, but his eyes still moved. He was smiling, almost blissful. "Bruno? I appreciate everything you've done for me tonight."

"An-anything... ah-ah-ah-any – anything thing for you... anything for you..." Bruno had taken up a new chant. "Anything for you... any – any – anything... my... my... my life... life is... anything for you... anything... my life for you..."

"Its okay, Bruno." Buffy leaned in and took his head in her hands. Gently, almost motherly, she kissed his forehead. Buffy pulled back to stare at the man. He was smiling up at her, mouth open, teeth showing, red eyes wide and vacant. There was a connection, now. Buffy felt it. It beat with the sound of the were-boar's own heartbeat. Buffy knew, deep down, that she couldn't just abandon him.

"Go home, Bruno. Go to bed. Sleep. Rest. Be well. I might need you for something else later on, so you have to be ready, okay?"

Bruno reached out to her, almost touched her, before pulling his hand back, as if he was about to desecrate something holy and barely stopped himself before it was too late. He bowed his head to Buffy, still crying. "Yes... yes, my... yes... Queen. Yes... rest... rest... sleep... Thank you... thank you... thank you..." His voice was almost a whisper.

Buffy watched as Bruno stumbled to his feet. He staggered away with all intent and speed he could muster.

Her next stop was a K-Mart, where she bought herself some t-shirts, a couple pair of jeans, some underwear, socks, and some sneakers. It was enough to get her started. Buffy also bought a newspaper, a couple of notebooks, some pens, a map of the city, two two-liter bottles of diet coke, and a bag of peppermint spears.

The White Castle, it turned out, was on the way between the K-Mart and the Hooker Hilton. She started eating almost as soon as she left the burger joint, and by the time she had her shit-hole of a room, she'd downed eleven of the thirty sliders she'd purchased. The man behind the counter had leered at her, but he gave her a room for $40 cash, no ID required.

Buffy finished slider number thirty shortly before falling asleep for the first time since the night before she leapt from Glory's tower, back in Sunnydale.

**XxxxxxX**

**_October 8, 1996_**

**_Saint Louis, Missouri_**

Despite there being three locks on her room's door, Buffy took the little metal lock-box with her when she left the next morning. She didn't trust the building's management, or the super, and she absolutely didn't trust her neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, her neighbor in the room to the left, a six foot four inch tall transsexual hooker who had introduced herself to Buffy as "Daisy", was yelling at the aforementioned super, assisted by her neighbor in the room to her right, a thin mustached leather-boy named Kyle. Buffy didn't pay attention as she made her way down the staircase – the elevator was out of service, and apparently had been since the Kennedy administration – but she could tell they were yelling about a sudden increase in the cockroach and spider populations of their room. Which was odd, because bugs hadn't bothered Buffy at all.

Buffy sat on the stoop, watching the sun rise above the nearby tenements. She didn't have to wait too long before her ride appeared. Bruno parked his motorcycle at the curb, and at the sight of Buffy he smiled wide, showing all of his teeth.

"Hi, Bruno! Thanks for coming to get me." She stood, lock-box in hand. "I like your bike!"

"Thank you, my Queen! Anything for you!" Bruno handed her a helmet as Buffy climbed on behind him. "Wh-where do you want to go, my Queen?"

"Well," Buffy's voice was muffled by the full-face helmet and visor, but he could hear her just fine. "I need to go by the library; I've got to do some internet research. And I need to get some more clothes. And breakfast would be nice." Bruno nodded as she spoke. "Oh, hey, after we pick up some clean clothes and maybe a bag to put them in, do you know where I can get a shower?"

"I'll take you back to my house. You can use the shower there if you wish, my Queen."

"That'd be great. So lets stop by a K-Mart or a Wal-Mart or a Target, or something. I need at least two more shirts and some slacks. Maybe a skirt. Don't have to be fancy right now, just needs to look presentable. Can't get a job if you look like a slob, right?"

"Yes, my Queen. You want to get a job? I mean, a regular job?"

"Well, yeah!" She slapped him gently on the shoulder, as if it were a stupid question. "Can't get any money without a job, right? What did you think I meant?"

_**EXASPERATION**_

Bruno nearly jumped in his seat, as if he had heard the beast living in the back of Buffy's mind speak. His body began to shake.

_**UNNECESSARY**_

Bruno jumped again. The shaking got worse.

_Shush, you._ Buffy spoke to the presence. _It is totally necessary. And stop it. You're frightening Bruno._

_**EXASPERATION**_

_I said shush!_ She stroked Bruno's face with her hand. "It's okay, Bruno. Calm down. You're fine. I'll protect you."

"Fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I' f-f-f-f-fine. Right. Right." The biker shook his head. "Got it. I'm fine. I'm fine. Right. Protect me. Right. I mean, I mean, yes, my Queen. Yes, my Queen."

"Hey, none of that. You and me are buds, right? You don't have to always be so stuffy. I'm not going to bite you." She smiled at him, and even though there was no way for him to see it behind the helmet, he still basked in her attention. "And wipe your chin. You're drooling."

"Yes, my Queen. I'm sorry, my Queen."

"It's okay. Don't worry about it." Buffy sighed. It was obviously going to be a long road, getting Bruno to lighten up. "So Bruno, have you eaten yet?"

"No, my Queen! I, uh, I haven't eaten anything since last night."

"Well, then. Breakfast is on me. Got to pay you back for driving me around today. How's that sound?"

"It's not – You don't have to – I mean, of course, my Queen. Anything you say."

Buffy pressed her body against her new friend Bruno as the were-boar pulled his motorcycle into traffic. Not normally the most careful of riders, Bruno was almost meticulous in his care this morning, for he was taking _HER_ where she needed to go.

**XxxxxxX**

With the demon on the loose, and all the potential chaos that would cause, Anita Blake actually thought she might catch a break. But no. Dolph Storr had to call her at 7 am and ask her to report to a crime scene. The perfect end to a perfect day that hadn't technically ended seeing as she didn't even get home until a quarter of seven. She'd still been in the living room of her house when the detective had called her.

"Blake, we got a weird one."

"What and where," she sighed. Not even enough time to catch a cup of coffee.

"Vacant lot at the corner of Surridge and Truman in the Blood District. Looks like a stick-up gone bad." Storr's voice was surprisingly peppy. "Victim looks like a vampire, and we're still trying to figure out how to get to the body without exposing it to the sun."

"Right. Okay, be there in about 45 minutes. I'm stopping on the way for coffee and a cruller."

"You're stopping to eat on the way to a crime scene? Some dedication to duty."

"First, I'm not a cop. I'm a consultant. Its not a duty. Second, I just got home and have been awake all night. So if you have a problem with me stopping to get some food in me, you can blow me. You got that, Storr?"

"Yeah yeah. Just get here."

By the time she was on the scene, the coffee she picked up with the cruller was laying in her stomach like a lead weight. She knew it would be alka-seltzer city when she got back home. Anita pulled into the lot just shy of the crime scene tape. Her head was still pounding from lack of sleep, and there was a part of her that hoped some dumb ass rookie gave her shit.

"Blake, take a look at this." It wasn't meant to be. Storr was standing right there. He waved her over. There were markers on the ground, and everyone was staying clear of the back of the van.

"Anita. You're going to like this one." Zerbrowski appeared from around the front of the van.

Storr nodded. "Old lady was chasing down her chihuahua after it got out of her apartment, found it here, lapping at the blood stains. Called it in. Watch the blood spatter."

"Blood out in the open. Do we know where the blood came from?"

"Yeah." Zerbrowski hooked a thumb at the van. "Body's in the back. Head's been cut off. From what we can see, the interior is covered in the runny red stuff."

"Right. And you know the vic is a vampire how?" She peered through a side window. All of the windows except the windshield were heavily tinted, but even so there were runny stains everywhere.

"We found a head, most likely the vic, under the van near a tire." Storr was matter of fact. "When the coroner pulled it out into the sunlight to bag it, the thing caught fire, then melted."

"So much for ID-ing the victim." Blake muttered.

"Okay, well, I don't know what I can do for you. It looks like a robbery gone wrong, not anything weird. Probably a shifter, or maybe another vampire." Anita yawned huge. "You really didn't need me here, Dolph. Come on, already. I need to get back home and to bed before I fall asleep in traffic, so I'm leaving."

"Right. Get out of here. If we have questions, we'll call."

She walked back to her SUV. Zerbrowski fell in step with her. "You don't think this is related to that demon thing from yesterday, do you?"

Blake just shook her head. "No. Demon wouldn't be interested in doing this sort of thing. You're going to probably find that the vic was a selling drugs or guns or something and got killed by an irate customer. This is small potatoes."

"Okay. Thanks, Anita. Talk to you later."

She nodded, yawned again, and went home to sleep.

**XxxxxxX**

Bruno stood in the small house's main room, staring unblinking at the bathroom door. His hearing, enhanced as it was befitting his nature as a were-boar, allowed him to listen to the sounds of his Queen as she bathed and made herself holy. She was singing. Bruno didn't recognize the song, but still, she was singing, and it was the most beautiful, most terrible sound he'd ever heard.

The sound of her voice in song brought tears to his red-rimmed eyes. Bruno felt absolute joy and terror at her being in his own house. He'd give her anything, do anything, say anything if it meant that she graced him with her presence, and as long as it meant that she didn't keep her attention on him for too long. His Queen was beautiful and cruel and he loved her and despaired.

The sound of the front door opening brought Bruno out of his reverie. A woman walked in, and it took him a few moments to realize that it was Sheila. Sheila. He'd been living with her for nearly eighteen years in a common law marriage, he remembered. She was co-owner of the house; it was in her name as well as his, he remembered.

Being in his Queen's presence had caused him to forget all about Sheila. Bruno was amazed that he wasn't more troubled by that.

"Hey, baby, what's going on? How'd that thing with Fisk go last night?" She walked past him into the house's small kitchen and began digging in the refrigerator.

"Went fine. Fine. Fine. Are... are you just off... off work?" Sheila worked night cleanup at Pete's Waterhouse, the local biker haunt, he remembered. Bruno felt himself become more aware as he clicked off more and more facts about Sheila. Her favorite color. Her favorite food. Her favorite band.

"Yeah, and I'm starving. Just gonna get myself a -" Sheila's voice trailed away. Like Bruno, Sheila was a War Pig, as the local were-boars called themselves, and thus also had their enhanced hearing. She stared at Bruno, irritated. "Who the fuck is singing? Is there someone in the shower?" Sheila dropped a jar of mayo onto the counter and took a step toward the bathroom door. He interposed himself, and her expression grew stormy.

"Who the fuck is in there, Bruno? Sounds like – " And now she was angry. "Is that a girl? Did you bring a fucking girl into our house!? We talked about that shit, Bruno! We both know we're going to play around, but not in the house! Keep your whores out of the house."

Sheila shoved him aside and began pounding on the bathroom door. "Get your ass out here, you little slut! I'm going to kick your fucking whore ass up bet – URK!" Bruno tilted his head to one side as he watched Sheila's expression. She was obviously shocked and surprised, and as she slid toward the floor, her mouth opened and closed rapidly several times. Trying to talk, probably, but the presence of his knife buried in her throat made it difficult.

Sheila was threatening the Queen. No one could do that and go unpunished.

Bruno stared for a second, then pulled the knife back. He stabbed her in the throat again, then in the chest, then again in the throat. When her eyes lost the spark of life, when he was sure she was dead, he wiped the knife off on her shirt and straightened.

His Queen was in the door of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel. Watching him.

"What... Bruno, what just happened? Why'd you – Bruno, you killed her? What happened?"

**XxxxxxX**

**_December 21, 1918_**

**_Chicago, Illinois_**

_Luther Black handed his opera cloak and hat off to one of the nameless flunkies that were positioned around the nave. He examined all the preparations; everything was set, everything was in position. The Chapel of the Holy Blood had once been an active place of worship, consecrated when Chicago was only a trans-shipment point between the shipping traffic along the rivers leading to America's heartland and the shipping traffic on the Great Lakes between the young United States and Canada. _

_That was long ago. The church had been abandoned when the wealthy and the elite of the city had packed up everything and fled before a wave of unwashed immigrants from Europe and Asia. Black had purchased the building for a song, and immediately ordered his followers to work certain changes upon the interior decor._

_The font was full of dog's urine. The pews of the nave were gone, and the floor of the chapel now featured a huge pentagram painted in human blood. The crucifix above the altar was inverted, with Christ's head now pointing toward perdition. And the altar. The altar was now the center of tonight's festivities._

_Tied down on the altar was the very same bibbling quim who had irritated him so much earlier in the evening. Her red dress, hat, mask, and feathers were long gone, as were her undergarments. She'd been drugged with opium to make her more tractable and controllable by his henchmen, who had whisked her away from the party hidden in a steamer trunk._

_She was tied in a standing position, bent nearly perpendicular to the ground. Her long blonde hair had been knotted in a rope that was connected to both her neck and her arms, which were themselves straightened and tied behind her. The rope on her arms was connected to a hook placed in the ceiling of the church, and connected by more rope. The entire thing had the effect of forcing the woman to hold her head up as straight as possible, and hold her arms in just the right position, lest she choke. And combined with the stance in which her legs were tied, it had the effect of presenting her womanly parts to anyone who stood behind her._

_Black candles burned all around the altar. A silver knife lay on the alter, under the woman's head. Black could see that the eyes were almost completely white, and that she was actually drooling._

"_We are ready for the ceremony, Lord."_

_Black nodded an acknowledgment to the man's words – Luther Black didn't bother learning the names of his flunkies unless they were important, and this one wasn't. He stripped off his clothing, then used the font to anoint his forehead, chest, and penis with the foul liquid kept there._

_Black moved behind the girl's raised buttocks. With one hand, he fondled his penis until it was almost painfully erect. He spat into the other, then rubbed the thick liquid into the folds of the woman's vagina. She moaned at the physical contact, causing Luther Black to smile. "Good... good... then let us begin."_

" _I call the Kings to Witness. I call the Kings to Watch." He moved closer, forcing himself to penetrate the woman. He could feel her shudder as he raped her. The drugs she had been given would insure her proper reaction to his efforts, regardless of what her conscious mind would have wanted. He raked his nails down her back, deep and raw, drawing bloody rivulets to begin seeping off of her flesh and onto the altar._

_The knife was just for show, a symbolic element of the ritual. All the bloodletting would be done with his bare hands._

"_I call on the Shining Darkness to assert authority over this temple to the false pauper god." He could feel himself getting closer and closer to release. Black wrapped a fist in her hair and pulled, forcing her head further back. The girl started gasping for breath. The girl was suffocating even as powerful orgasmic waves pummeled her. She was cumming like she'd never cum before in her life._

"_I call on the Edomites to claim authority over this place and make it sacred to them!" With the last words of the ritual, Luther Black's seed sprayed into the girl's womb. She shuddered uncontrollably, both from her continued orgasm and from the utter, inhuman cold caused by the touch of his semen. Black pushed her head to the side and bit into her neck. The girl's flesh parted and blood sprayed into his mouth and over his face and onto their conjoined bodies._

_He continued gnawing on her, tearing gobbets of flesh away, chewing, and swallowing them until she hung lifeless from the ropes. For an hour he devoured her flesh and blood, ripping it from her body with his teeth. When he finally stepped away from her carcass, the girl's throat was nothing but a blood-sodden mass, her head connected to the rest of her body only by a collection of of fleshy, rope-like strings._

_Luther Black stepped away from the corpse, panting. The girl's blood covered him almost from scalp to toe. The altar to which she was tied was bathed in red. He took another step back, trying to bring his breathing back under control as he studied the girl's corpse. The sacrifice had been accepted. He could feel it. He knew it. It was working. The blood sacrifice of the poor deluded girl, who'd begun the day dreaming of glamorous parties among the rich, had linked the Novum Ordo to his true endeavor._

_Black found himself enervated; more than anything, he felt like he might sleep for a day or more at once. Time to rest and recharge his energy._

_His lackeys led him away from the altar, helping him stay on his feet until he was in the private rooms formed in the church's cellars. He would bathe, he would sleep, he would eat. He'd need his strength to move his plans along. The next part of his plan was intricate, and it wouldn't do to get it wrong._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime noir stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Pendleton Legacy_ by August Derleth is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second:** So, the hunt for Buffy the Old One is on the way, the actual villain of the piece has been shown to be very villainous, RPIT and the shifter leadership has made an appearance, and the effects of being too close to Buffy have been hinted at. Please read and review, let me know what you think.


	3. The Hunter From Beyond

**The Hunter From Beyond**

**XxxxxxX**

"_First rule of magic: Don't let anyone know your real name. Names have power." – **Neil Gaiman, **"The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**August 9, 1925**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_For two weeks now, the killer the an enthusiastic police reporter had dubbed the Dog Days Killer had been holding the fears of the residents of Chicago in his blood-stained hands. Since the start of the heat wave, the police had found the bodies of ten men and women at seemingly random locations in Cabrini Green. The dead had been drained of blood. The coroners had all reported that setting in, the corpses had been carefully posed so that when rigor mortis set in, each of them was in a bizarre position that even a circus rubber-man couldn't reach. In some cases, the joints in the arms and legs, shoulders, and even necks were broken to form the eerie shapes the bodies were found in._

_Cabrini Green was a violent place, and murder was in no way uncommon. But these killings were monstrous and brutal even for a neighborhood known for its monstrous brutality._

_The last eight years had brought success after success after success, and it had made Luther Black bold and overconfident. The power normally wielded by the Covenant of the Fanged Moon had been nearly broken because of the vastly unexpected side-effect of their decision to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and Luther Black and his new cult, dedicated not to mere demon worship but to actually worshiping the Kings of Edom, had taken advantage of it and expanded around the globe._

_Black had directed his followers to infiltrate the bands of smugglers who brought opium and liquor to the United States; both breeds of criminal were used to sneak mystic artifacts into the country. The cult robbed banks just to seize safe deposit boxes known to house even more mystic artifacts. Ships carrying archaeological finds from China, Egypt, Central America, and the Orient were hijacked on the open seas. And always, these crimes were tracked back to drug dealers and bootleggers and bank robbers and pirates, but never back to their source: Luther Black._

_And now the ritual sacrifices done in the dog days of 1925 had brought Luther Black an extraordinary opportunity. The mystic power embodied in the sacrifice of ten human beings allowed the sorcerer to pierce the veil of darkness that separated the Light of Creation from the Shining Darkness. Metaphorically, Luther Black had drilled a peep-hole through the walls of the Four Worlds of Creation and into that utterly alien landscape that lay beyond all of the paltry evil known to mankind._

_The anguish that he inflicted on the sacrificial victims had served as the drill bit. The unnatural positions of their bodies and the locations at which they were left for the authorities to find had formed the dark geometry that focused Black's magicks. The terror that gripped the greater populace because of these murders – super-charged because of the agony of the heat wave – served as the hard hands that turned the drill._

_Through this peep-hole, he mystically gazed on the Kings of Edom in their dark realms. And when his spying was through, he had a greater insight on what he had to do to gain power from them._

_Because of the murders, the police were accused of falling down on the job. Newspaper editorials claimed that the reason for the police department's neglect was that because all of the victims were minorities, and were living in poverty and thus had no real value to society. The truth was that while the brave officers of the Chicago Police Department scrambled to find the killer, Luther Black manipulated the investigation by way of his puppets in the Novus Ordo._

_In the end, only two detectives were assigned to investigate the murders. Patrick Monaghey was an outcast among his fellow detectives for his refusal to accept bribes from Doyle Lonnagan, the head of the Irish mob. Adler Gerich was considered a strange duck for relying on the teachings of the Austrian head-shrinker Freud in an attempt to 'get into the minds of the criminals' and thus be able to predict their actions._

_Along with a hard-boiled private detective who name really was Dick Danger, even though no one believed him, and despite every roadblock thrown in their way by Luther Black and his puppets in the city's government, the three detectives had actually been able to find the site where Black had sacrificed his victims, not merely the site where the bodies were dumped afterward. The scene of the murders was an old textiles factory on the waterfront. Though the three men fought their way through the cultists hiding among the clanking machinery and flowing thread, they were too late to save the eleventh and final victim of Luther Black's depravity._

_They found the sorcerer clad in robes of the deepest blood red and black, wearing a goat mask that hid his face from view. Luther black had peeled back the skin and flesh from his latest victim's chest, had cracked open the man's rib cage, and had taken the poor man's heart in his hands. Black peered through the spirit captured in the organ to see beyond the infernal realms of mankind's paltry even and into the Shining Darkness of the Qliphotic Realm._

_The ritual was stopped by a quick application of a thermite grenade. The resulting fire consumed the body of the sacrificial victim, who had been suspended on the edge of death by the spell. The poor man had become a living gateway to the Shining Darkness. Though Luther Black and his three adversaries had survived, none of them escaped the ruined factory unchanged._

_Qliphothic energies had spilled forth and changed them all, if not in body then in soul, in ways they never suspected._

_Patrick Monaghey retired from the police force and became a private investigator. His cases would almost always involve magic, the preternatural, and the paranormal. Adler Gerich also left the department; he continued his education and eventually found work as a psychiatrist at Blackwell Prison, specializing treating the criminally insane. Dick Danger stayed in his chosen profession, but his sense of self-protection decreased as his need to experience situations that presented more and greater danger to himself grew. He became famous, or perhaps infamous, for barely escaping death by the skin of his teeth._

_And Luther Black, having spied into the Shining Darkness and glimpsed the shadows of the Kings of Edom, changed from an occultist seeking power enough to stand among the dark gods to a servant dedicated to freeing the Shining Kings from their eons-old mystic prison and loosing them on the world in exchange for rulership of the whole wide world..._

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

Detective Tammy Reynolds blew her bangs out of her eyes as she dropped the file into her outbox. She'd come in early to get some paperwork done on the entire Whitebridge thing while Storr and Zerbrowski were out checking on the headless vampire. All told, she was glad for the quiet time. She grabbed a cup of coffee, and came back to her desk just in time for one of the uniformed runners to drop a rolling cart off at her desk.

"What's this?" The cart was stacked with books, many of them really, really old.

"Oh, the construction firm that bought the Whitebridge property pulled these and some other books out of the house along with all the furniture and stuff before they started knocking it down." The uniform shrugged. "Storr called them about anything weird or magical and this is what they sent over."

Reynolds ran a finger along the spines, looking for titles. Most of them lacked, but the ones that did caused her to shiver as she recognized them. _The Book of Hidden Names_, for example; a basic textbook on summoning and controlling demons. _The Codex Pestilientius_, another book to have if you wanted to raise up the unholy. She leaned in on one book; the cover looked for all the world like an eyeless human face that had been stretched out over black wood.

"Yeah," the runner said. "According to the note, it's all the books they couldn't recognize. They kept the copies of _Catcher in the Rye _and _Gone With the Wind _ and stuff like this. These are the weird ones."

"So why bring them to me?"

"Lieutenant Storr wanted you to look into them, see if you can find more information about that big glass jar that was in the basement of the Whitebridge House."

"Great. There goes my morning." She collapsed into her chair and reached for the first book.

**XxxxxxX**

"What... Bruno, what just happened? Why'd you – Bruno, you killed her? What happened?"

"Sh-sh-she was attacking you. You. My Queen."

"But she couldn't have hurt me, Bruno! God! What..." Buffy's expression was half surprise that Bruno would exceed any possible instruction she gave him in this particular manner, and half base irritation at having been inconvenienced. "I never asked you to kill anybody! Bruno, this is bad. This is... this is really, really bad! I mean, what are we supposed to do with her now? Do you have any experience hiding a body, Bruno? Because I sure don't! We were supposed to go get some breakfast, Bruno! And I need some clothing! Check job listings! What am I supposed to do now?"

_**EXASPERATION**_

_Whatever._ Buffy knelt next to the dead woman, looking the corpse over. Other than the stab wound in the chest and the mess that was the woman's throat, everything seemed okay. "What's her name, Bruno?" Buffy slowly withdrew the knife that bisected the woman's neck and examined it.

"Sheila, my Queen."

"Sheila." She tasted the name, memorizing it. "Is this knife silver, Bruno?" Bruno just nodded. "I'm going to hang onto it for a while, okay?" Bruno nodded again. "Well, let's take care of Sheila, shall we?" Buffy pulled Sheila flat and attempted CPR. Chest compressions, breathing for the victim, everything that Riley had taught her so long ago in another world.

It was fruitless, of course. The girl was long dead by the time Buffy tried. Her irritation at the idiotic were-boar and the frustration of having one more thing tossed at her grew as Buffy wasted time trying to revive an obvious corpse.

Nothing. It just wasn't working. All her pushing on Sheila's chest was doing was causing blood to pump out of the woman's neck. It had got all over Buffy's hands, and the spreading bloodstain in the hallways carpet was leaching onto the towel she was still wrapped in, and staining her knees and calves where she was kneeling in it.

Buffy stood. Anger and frustration poured from her in waves. Bruno's eyes widened, but he didn't move. He couldn't move.

"Perfect. This is just perfect. Damn it! I'm all bloody now. I just got out of the shower!" Buffy glared at Bruno. "And what the hell are you just standing around for, you big dummy! This is all your fault, you moron! You idiot! How could he have done this? How could he have endangered me like this? Ruined my plans like this? All I needed was a place to stay, some cloths, a job! A normal life! And you... you...

_**HUMAN**_

… _asshole! _You've ruined it! You've ruined everything!"

Buffy was fuming. The cops were going to come. They were going to want to ask questions about Bruno and Sheila and about her! She was going to get caught up in an investigation about a murder that wasn't her fault and her life would be in even bigger ruins that it already was!

Visions of the police chasing her after the death of Kendra Young flashed before her eyes. Living on the streets of Los Angeles, the things she'd done just to survive before she managed to land the waitressing job, the men she'd allowed to – _NO!_ She'd never let that happen again! The fear and anger that had been her constant companions for the last eighty years bubbled to the surface. Tears filled her eyes. Decades of frustration struck her like a cannon shell and hung heavy on her soul. She felt anger like she'd never known.

_**PUNISH**_

For once, she didn't question or resist the Presence.

She growled at the still-silent Bruno.

And leapt.

**XxxxxxX**

**_October 8, 1996_**

**_Wichita, Kansas_**

Peter Clawicz was originally a twin. The ova from which he had developed had split in the usual process by which twin children occurred. The day before he was born, while still in his mother's womb, the fetal Clawicz had opened his eyes and seen his twin for the first time. Long before he had a name or an identity, Peter Clawicz had become a murderer, for he strangled his twin brother with his own umbilical cord the day before the two of them were born.

That was eight years ago. The boy had only become more colder and crueler since birth. Her parents were terrified slaves to the child's whim. They knew him for the monster he was, and out of terror did exactly as he commanded them to do.

Today Peter was playing fetch with Toby. Toby was a pug. The dog was squat and thick and mush-faced and snorted and snuffled. He was the closest thing to a friend that Peter had, and for all that the monster child could he loved his Toby. Peter wasn't interested in scaring and harming the dog. Dogs were easy to scare, easy to kill, and when you were done there was no payoff. He loved dogs. Cats, not so much. But he loved dogs.

No, killing and terrifying people was where the fun lied. Since he was able to walk, Peter had been responsible for forty-seven murders. Eleven of them, the ones that happened in Louisville, had been connected by a police profile and were being investigated as the "Cradle-Robber Murders". He'd convinced other kids to jump off tall buildings convinced they could fly. He'd talked other kids into playing with their parents' firearms with fatal results. One red-haired girl he'd held under the water at the lake until she stopped moving. He burned a house to the ground, taking an entire family. What he'd done to his father would be an often investigated cold case by agents of the FBI for decades.

There had been many others.

But this morning, he'd been running around the yard, playing fetch the ball with Toby and laughing about it. He did this often. And when he did, he looked like every other child on the planet.

The game stopped abruptly as Peter heard a voice in his head. He stopped running and dropped the ball. Toby, thinking it was another game, grabbed it and took off for the far side of the yawn, not realizing that his boy wasn't following. Peter was listening to the voice in the back of his head. The dark voice of his real mother.

Demoiselle Nocturne had carved her domain out of Peter's dark, murderous dreams long ago, dreams which so often ended in blood and bone, with the little boy dancing among the despoiled corpses of his victims. Nocturne didn't hide the fact that she had important plans for him once he was a little older.

Peter walked into the house and found the woman who mistakenly thought she was his mother. "Go pack, Jane. We have to go to Saint Louis. Today. There's something I need to do in Saint Louis." Peter Clawicz headed to his own room to pack his own bag. He liked his travel bag. It had SpongeBob on it, and SpongeBob was the funniest thing in the entire Five Worlds, except for Toby.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

When Buffy came back to herself, she was curled up naked in a semi-fetal position under the table in Bruno and Sheila's combination kitchen/dining room. The linoleum under her was marred by rapidly drying puddles of blood. More blood covered the underside of the table. Blood covered nearly every surface she could see in the nearby kitchen.

Buffy blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She crawled out from under the table and, standing, stared at her arms and her breasts and her shoulders and her stomach. Blood covered everything in patches and long streaks, a sharp red contrast to the gold patches on her skin. It hadn't been long enough for the blood to dry completely, but it had already gone from crimson to rust. Her mouth was filled with the taste of pennies and she her tongue automatically went to places where meaty strings were caught between them.

She no longer felt the need for breakfast. On the contrary, she felt like she'd just finished with a long all-you-can eat session at the Golden Corral.

There was a pink, pulpy mass in the kitchen, shoved hard against the cabinets beneath the counter. It took her a moment to realize that this was what a human body looked like when almost all of the skin were removed, and the internal organs, and most of the flesh of one leg. Bruno. Buffy blinked at the ruined corpse of the man she had unthinkingly turned into a minion. Her head cocked to one side as she considered what was left of him. Her mouth pursed.

"Well... shit!" Buffy glared at Bruno's body. "Why in the hell did you... it's like everything I do just makes it worse." She looked down at her naked body again, noting the patterns of gold under the splashes of liquid red. "This is seriously not good. Seriously not good. Can't stay here, can't leave like this."

Sheila was still laying where she had fallen, in front of the bathroom door. Buffy stepped over the woman and back into the bathroom. She felt – the first word to come to her was _grody_, a long ago relic of her days as a Valley Girl – sticky, smelly, itchy, and gross. A look in the mirror showed that her hair was matted with blood; that it covered her lower face and necks like a clown's greasepaint.

Buffy ran the shower to as hot as she could get it and stepped in. The steaming water sluiced down her body, taking with it the initial layers of gore. She plucked the washcloth from the shower rack and scrubbed at her face, her chest, her legs... everywhere the blood had begun to dry; everywhere loose gobbets of Bruno were still sticking to her. Buffy emptied the bottle of shampoo – probably Sheila's; it smelled like citrus and lilacs – cleaning her hair.

The water was long since cold by the time Buffy stepped out of the shower. She wrapped herself in a towel, and another one for her head, then stepped over Sheila again to go into the bedroom. Sheila was larger than she was in pretty much all dimensions, but Buffy was still able to find a set of blue jeans and a belt. She rolled the cuffs on the pants and cinched the belt tight. One of Sheila's t-shirts hung large on her, but it looked less like a tent than a stylistic choice, so that was okay. Looking around, Buffy found a ratty-looking pair of womens' sneakers next to a much larger pair of deck shoes. Extra socks in the toes took care of the size difference. A light jacket completed the ensemble. She wasn't particularly bothered by the cold, anymore, but it was October in Missouri, and people would wonder why she wasn't freezing if she didn't have something.

Buffy stepped out on onto the house's front stoop – it didn't actually have a porch, just a short concrete apron with a roof over it – and stared for a moment at the car, sitting next to the driveway. She contemplated using it to get where she needed to go, but in the ended decided it was too big a risk. Sooner or later the police would come and find the bodies, and if one of the vehicles was missing, they'd hunt for it and if they found her in it...

No, it wasn't worth the risk.

Buffy went back inside and searched the house. It wasn't a very thorough search, but it did turn up a roll of twenty dollar bills in the jewelry box in the bedroom, and a coffee can filled with various denominations in in the freezer. Buffy considered searching Sheila and Bruno to see what they had on them, but in the end decided not to; she did, however, take the watch off of Sheila's wrist and put it on her own. She found a multicolored tote bag with a "Visit Branson!" imprint in the bedroom closet, and shoved the coffee can, the cash box from the van, another of Sheila's t-shirts, and an extra pair of socks into it.

Buffy glanced at the watch. It was nearing 11:00 am. She'd been asleep longer than she thought.

"This is all going pear-shaped," she said with a sigh. She left the house, trying to remember from the ride to the house that morning just how to get to the nearest bus stop.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

The homeless man awoke suddenly. He couldn't remember where he was, but he was used to that and so it did not worry him. He also couldn't remember who he was, but that was a different issue. To remind him of his true identity was to face a rage as wild and deep as a forest fire.

His master called him Arlecchino, 'The Harlequin'. It isn't his name, but he responds to it when those who know it refer to him as such. His manner of did resemble a fool's motley, in abstract. His collection of clothing was mismatched and multicolored Dirty and obviously threadbare. The man himself was extraordinarily pale, and had one familiar with the preternatural seen him, they might think him a vampire were it not for his standing freely in the sunlight. He moved with an awkward jerkiness that belied his true grace and speed. He also moved in perfect silence.

He cast no shadow in the light.

Arlecchino stared at the sky from his position next to the overflowing dumpster. He seemed to study it. He climbed to his feet, still staring at the sky, and ambled in his jerky, off-balance manner. He could not have spoken his destination had be been asked, but of course no one asked. People he got close to as he walked shied away in fear; men, women, children, honest or criminal, no one wanted to get too close to the filthy, obviously insane homeless man.

His route was a rambling one, rather than direct, and it took him nearly four hours to find it. He stood in front of the building, a two-story commercial building across the street from the Chicago Macy's in the historical district known as The Loop.

Arlecchino stared at the building, not seeing it but rather the Masonic Temple that had once stood in the current building's place. He tried to remember why the Masonic Temple was so important to him, but eventually dismissed it as unimportant. He had things to do.

He wandered into an alley running along-side the building, and there found something of use: a discarded ball-point pen. With his prize, Arlecchino returned to the front of the building and began his task. With great care, precision, and concentration, he began to etch a doorway into building's facade. It took him nearly an hour and a half, during most of which he had to endure the meaningless bleatings of some man who'd rushed out of the building. Arlecchino had paused in his work just long enough to look at the man – man, bah, he was a sheep.

He continued his work.

Shortly before finishing, a policeman had arrived and demanded that he stop what he was doing. Arlecchino ignored him. The policeman then demanded that he put his hands up and step away. Arlecchino ignored him. The policeman approached and put a hand on Arlecchino's wrist and tried to stop him from doing his work.

Arlecchino turned to the policeman with a smile and moved, just slightly. The movement was too quick for the bystanders who had gathered to watch the show to realize what happened. All they knew was that the policeman was no longer trying to arrest the homeless man. The screams started when the policeman fell backward. The bottom of a discarded ball-point pen was visible just under the officer's jawline. The point of the pen was embedded in his brain.

Arlecchino ignored it. He put the finishing touches on the door by dabbing his fingers in the blood that was seeping out of the man's throat around the pen. And then Arlecchino stepped through the door. When more police officers arrived, all the found were the screaming bystanders, the dead police officer, and a storefront wall that had been defaced with ink and blood.

On the other side of the door, Arlecchino emerged in another empty and started walking. He didn't know what it was he was looking for, but he knew it was around somewhere and he would find it if it took him thirty years.

His master demanded it.

Arlecchino stepped from the mouth of the alley, still examining his surroundings. He stopped as he caught sight of the huge structure in the distance. A gigantic arch stood over a skyline filled with shorter buildings. He didn't know why, but he seemed to remember it from somewhere. But it was no matter. It was there, and that was one of the signs his master told him to look for when coming to this new city.

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

_**Saint Louis, Missouri**_

The door to Lieutenant Rudolph Storr's office slammed open, revealing an angry and slightly disheveled Anita Blake. "Okay, Dolph, what was so important that you had to wake me up after only three hours sleep?" Anita Blake hadn't just strode into the RPIT office, she had stomped. Her face was a raging thunderstorm of anger and irritation. This anger didn't surprise anyone; pissed off was Anita Blake's default setting. When she got this way, which was almost always, most of the RPIT team simply avoided her. Reynolds was immune to the anger and knew how to tap it down. Zerbrowski deflected with bad jokes and empathy. But Storr? Storr egged it on. The man didn't care, because he didn't have to.

Blake had once described Storr as a force of nature.

"Excuse me for interrupting your beauty sleep, but we had a bunch of news come back. Thought you might want to know about it." Storr stood from his desk and met her at the door, using his greater body mass to force her back into the detectives' bullpen.

"For which case? The missing demon girl, or the van with the body in it?"

"Both, believe it or not. The Forensics guys collected some fingerprints, some skin cells, and two types of hair from inside the fishbowl." Storr waved the DNA report.

"Two types of hair?"

"Yeah. First type long and wavy, the other type short and curly. Lab boys think the first is hair from the girl's head given its length, and expect the second type to be pubic hair. That fits, given that according to the construction guys, she was naked when they pulled her out of there." Storr handed Blake the forensics report. "They ran the prints and ran DNA analysis on the hair and skin. None of It came back from any of the national databases, so whoever the girl is, she's not in the system."

"Which isn't a surprise, really." Zerbrowski sat at his desk with his feet up. "If the girl was in that jar as long as we think she could have been, she predates most of the reasons why someone would be in AFIS or CODIS, when you think about it."

Without looking up from the report, Blake said, "You guys need to remember that she's not a girl, remember?"

"Hey, the body's still human. People have been rescued from possession before, right?" Zerbrowski hadn't finished asking his question when Blake started shaking his head.

"From what you tell me, she's been possessed for at least fifteen years, maybe longer. Maybe a lot longer. There's no coming back from that. Even if she can be exorcised, she's likely going to be a raving psycho after its all over. And from what we can tell, the demon inside of her isn't going to be a push-over to exercise."

"And how'd you know that?" Storr snorted. He already knew where she got the information.

"I consulted some experts. They figure that the thing inside that fishbowl was really, really powerful if it needed that much containment magic. The idea that they might have been holding a fallen angel was floated, in fact."

"You're kidding." It was clear Zerbrowski thought she was joking. Then he caught the look on her face. The detective's feet hit the floor with a loud slap. "You're serious?"

"Yeah. The vampires and weres in charge are all terrified. They've got everyone on the lookout."

"Actually that fits." Tammy Reynolds began searching through the books that were stacked haphazardly on her desk. "There was one here... I can't remember the name of it. This book, it had ceremonies and rituals for calling up some truly nasty and powerful entities. And none of them sounded like your usual hellspawn. I mean, like, there was one ritual to call up the Incarnated Spirit of Gluttony and set it against an enemy, for example. Another dealt with calling down something that I swear sounded a bit like a mythological god."

"What?"

"I swear, Lieutenant. It was like a book on how to call really horrible monsters. Not just werewolves or demons, but the kind of monsters Hercules always fought in the myths."

"Great. Just great. Fallen angels and mythological gods. That

raises more questions." Storr snorted again.

"Like what?"

Storr handed her a second report. "The stolen ambulance was recovered just inside the Blood District, in a public parking lot. The driver and the EMT were unconscious, and aside from suffering from some PTSD-like symptoms, they're pretty much unharmed. The same fingerprints as inside the fishbowl were all over the ambulance, which isn't too terribly surprising. Thing is, if this demon of yours is so evil, why are the two ambulance guys still alive?"

"The demon didn't kill them? That's way weird." She looked down at the report, baffled.

"Yeah, if you say so. From what the two guys said, the girl woke up, knocked them around a bit, tied them down to their own gurney, and asked a bunch of questions about Saint Louis."

Blake finally had enough and found a chair. "What kind of questions."

"She asked about finding a cheap hotel room, where to find a Salvation Army or something called a 'Goodwill' whatever that was. She also asked where the hookers and the drug sellers hung out at." Storr leaned on a desk. It audibly groaned form his weight. "According to them, she acted more like a really, really scary shifter than a demon."

"You think she might be a were?"

Storr shrugged. "No idea. Either way, our lab don't test for that."

"And it gets better. According to the EMT, a guy named Bill Dellert, she also asked if we had the internet, cell phones, open-toed wedges, Expresso Pumps, and Double-Meat Palaces in this dimension – that's how she asked it, in this dimension." Zerbrowski held up a hand. "And no, I have no idea what an Expresso Pump or a Double-Meat Palace is."

"That makes no sense. Why would a demon be asking about cell phones and shoes."

"Your guess is as good as anybodies," Storr shrugged. On a man his size, it was an impressive maneuver. "Now here's where it gets really interesting. The fingerprint guys were running the prints they took from the doors and interior of the van we found the headless vampire in. Whose prints should show up on the passenger side door handle, the interior of the van on the passenger seat, and on both the inside and outside of the van's rear doors?" He handed her the report from the murder scene.

Anita stared at it, unable to believe what she was reading. "What?" She looked up at Storr.

"Yeah. Me too. We got back lots of prints from that van. Some match the vic, some match a handful of known hookers who apparently have traded in sex for pay in exchange for being suckjobs for pay, and a low-level thug name of Bruno Webb who's been known to work as a leg-breaker for a couple of vamps. And then there's our friend from the bubble."

"You think she's good for killing that vamp, Dolph?"

"She could be, but who knows. As far as we can tell she hasn't actually killed anyone yet despite, you know, you saying she's demon-possessed. But I don't like her being on the scene."

Blake nodded. It was too much to ask that it be a horrible coincidence. "Have you picked up this Bruno guy or the hookers?"

"Sent some uniforms to the last known addresses of the suckjobs. I was waiting for you to get here to go talk to Bruno. He's a shifter; figured you could back us up if he decided to get hostile."

"Sure. Let's go." Anita Blake stood from her chair. "No time like the present, right?"

"Right."

**XxxxxxX**

The guy at the Gas-n-Go had helpfully supplied directions to the main branch of the public library, and Buffy had decided to walk rather than waste time doing the city bus dance. It turned out to be a pleasant experience. It was a warm morning, and the sun was shining brightly. She had particularly liked the fact that the light reflecting from the Gateway Arch glittered and shifted as her position in relation to the monument changed. It was pretty, and despite everything that happened, she was still someone who appreciated pretty. She was actually beginning to think that she might like living here. Sure, it wasn't Los Angeles, but it was okay, and if she got tired of it, she could always move back out west.

Once at the Olive Street library, Buffy did a quick reconnoiter, and decided that she approved. It wasn't as homey as the Sunnydale High library, but it was definitely more friendly than the UC Sunnydale hall of Booky Knowledge had been, and was more cosmopolitan than the Sunnydale County Library had been.

It turned out that she had to sign up on a waiting list to use a public computer terminal, but that was okay. It gave her a chance to sit down and just relax for the first time since she climbed out of the jar the Whitebridge's had kept her in. She'd just settled into the third chapter of Paulo Coelho's "Veronika Decides to Die" when her name was called.

The first thing she did was, naturally, look for any trace of herself and her friends. She'd already figured out that she wasn't in Kansas anymore, and that this world was probably some sort of alternate like the one that had produced Vampire Willow, but there might still be a chance.

It took nearly an hour. She'd been able to find her mother, under her mother's maiden name, attached to a website for an art gallery in Beverly Hills, and her dad's name attached to the website of a law firm in Los Angeles, but no mentions of herself or for Dawn. The pictures that accompanied the names confirmed that it was her parents, but again there was no mention of them being married much less having kids. She did find Sheila and Ira Rosenberg, both of whom were apparently professors of psychology at UCLA. Their bios didn't mention family either. She couldn't find any information on the Harrises at all, and Rupert Giles was apparently happily ensconced at the British Museum as a curator. And then there was the town itself. It seemed that there was no Sunnydale in California. When she looked at a map, Sunnydale had been replaced by a town called 'Santa Barbara' that Buffy had never heard of.

The whole thing made her a bit depressed. In this world, there was no Buffy or Dawn. There might be a Willow, but if there was this Willow was a Willow that had most likely grown up without the influence of a Xander. And while there was a Giles, he wasn't the same person either.

Surprisingly, it was finding Faith brought tears to her eyes. In this time, in this place, Faith had never made it past her eleventh birthday. She had died young, and in pain, and at the hands of her mother. The trial had apparently made national headlines.

For all intents and purposes, she was alone.

Out of desperation, she did searches for the other people she knew from Sunnydale. No trace of a Cordelia Chase. No Daniel Osborne, nor even a band called 'Dingoes Ate My Baby.' No trace of a Jonathan Levinson or a Larry Blaisdell, or an Aura Greenwood, or even a Tucker Welles. The only name she found that she knew was Harmony Kendall, who had apparently won the Junior Miss California pageant ten years ago when she was 8.

The whole thing made her majorly depressed.

**XxxxxxX**

"Oh come on, really?"

Since she was here and still had the computer, Buffy had decided to find out what she could about the new world she was in. Like who was president (some guy from Texas she'd never heard of, who apparently was the son of a previous president she _had_ heard of), and whether the US was at war (with _Afghanistan_ of all places; last she heard that country was an empty wasteland not worth fighting over), what movies were popular (apparently there had been five _Harry Potter _movies made in this world; back in Sunnydale the fourth book had barely been released, and none of them had been made into movies), what music was popular (she was surprised and disappointed to find that no one had apparently even heard of Cibo Matto here; on the other hand, the fact that no one had ever heard of Remy Zero made her strangely happy), and generally get a feel for her new world.

In so doing, she discovered the online archives of Washington University and their Preternatural Biology department. The materials she found explained precisely what was up with all the werewolves and vampires she'd felt wandering around town. It was enlightening, if not confusing and a little bit frightening. She was a bit freaked out by the entire 'vampires as legal citizens' thing. Vampires were evil, manipulative monsters.

"How stupid do you have to be to think of a bloodsucker as a person and not a monster," Buffy said. The kid at the next computer over, a girl who was dressed for college, gave Buffy a dirty look at muttered something about bigots, but she just shrugged it off. Clearly the girl had never actually encountered a real vampire.

In Buffy's opinion, an expanded tax base didn't seem a decent enough reason to make them legal. And she didn't care who tried to stop her, Buffy didn't see a need to wait for a cop or a warrant or a sanctioned bounty hunter or whatever when it came to killing vampires. Of course, it was possible that they were all soul-having like Angel, but even with a soul, human beings treated each other like shit all the time.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_Yeah, I think its stupid _too. Besides, if the stuff she read online was right, the vampires' political structure and constant in-fighting couldn't be good for the long-term survival of the cities they inhabited, either.

Buffy spent the next three hours poking around the internet. She looked for everything. Information on the shapeshifters. Information on magic. Information on demons. Information on vampires. She looked up information on Saint Louis tourist attractions and museums and art galleries. She looked up popular nightclubs – and when she discovered Guilty Pleasures, she immediately decided to never go there. She wasn't planning on gracing this Circus of the Freaky Vampire Side-Show Acts, either.

And when she got bored looking up information on the city, she started in with the job listings. She found several that looked possible, but there was something about them. She didn't much want to return to waitressing, but there was a retail opportunity she thought she could handle.

Buffy looked down at herself. Ratty-looking blue jeans and a t-shirt. So very much not job interview clothing. That put her back on the internet, looking for places she could buy some inexpensive but still-nice clothing, suitable for talking to people about a job.

Things were looking way up, and after that morning, she needed it.

**XxxxxxX**

Clive Perry banged on the door with the heel of his fist.

There was no answer. The RPIT detective looked at Anita Blake, and then to Donald Zerbrowski. He banged on the door again.

Still no answer.

"Two vehicles in the drive. Engines were cold." Zerbrowski shrugged.

"You want me to keep knockin'?" Perry asked.

Zerbrowski just shook his head. "Hold on a second." The senior detective stepped off of the stoop and into the empty flower bed that ran along the house's front wall. There was a huge, dirty window with curtains. Zerbrowski leaned in close to the window, cupping his hands around his eyes to block the sun. He peered past the curtains...

"Shit! There's a body! I'm looking at a body. Get that door open, now!" Zerbrowski pulled his weapon at almost the same time Blake and Perry did. Detective Perry stepped back and executed a perfect unassisted breach, kicking the door open. The three of them entered the house in a rush, leading with their weapons.

The interior of the house was quiet, cool, and filled with a coppery odor that all three recognized as belonging to spilled blood. The house's main space included a semi-divided living room/entrance area and the dining room that opened onto the kitchen. They could see body Zerbrowski had spotted in the hallway, a woman, that intersected the living room and the dining room, and past the body the heavily bloodstained area along the back wall.

Perry got motioned to check a door on the left of the main room while Blake headed down a short hallway to the right. Zerbrowski checked the pulse on the dead woman; he didn't find one, but given the amount of blood under her head, and the fact that her neck was nothing but gaping wounds, that didn't surprise him. Zerbrowski took a note of the silvery knife that lay on the carpet next to the DB, but didn't do anything with it, yet. He carefully stepped over the dead woman and did a rapid check of a side door. The bathroom. Empty, but still a bit more humid than the rest of the house. The door past the bathroom contained a bedroom. Also empty.

"Clear!" The yell from Perry was echoed by the one from Blake.

"Clear!" Zerbrowski returned. He turned and met Blake and Perry in the dining room. There was blood everywhere.

"Someone had themselves a party." Perry was staring, wide-eyed. They moved forward, carefully, and turned the corner into the house's small kitchen.

"Holy shit! What is that? Is that a guy?"

Zerbrowski glanced at Perry. Despite the man's skin being a natural mahogany color, the detective sergeant could see that Perry's complexion had paled.

"Yeah, that's a guy. And so is that over there. And that there shoved in between the stove and the wall." Blake's face was grim as she put away her weapon. "I, uh, I think its all the same guy."

Zerbrowski holstered his pistol. "Perry, get on the phone to Storr. We need a CSU out here and we need it yesterday."

**XxxxxxX**

Buffy stepped into the book store. And looked around. It looked inviting, sort of like the Magic Box always had. The shelves were wide-spaced and short enough to see over. There was no coffee bar, no big advertising stacks shoving the latest big new thing at people, and no Muzak. Oh, there was music, but it was something European and jazzy, not canned.

The job listing had said the Skylight Bookstore was looking for a sales clerk-slash-customer assistant. She'd occasionally helped Giles out with starting up the Magic Box, so Buffy figured she could handle this. It wasn't like it was a Borders or a Books-a-Million. It was just a small, home-owned bookstore. The store was empty other than the man behind the counter. Buffy watched as he huffed into the phone.

"I can't tell what you're saying, Heidi. No, Heidi. You're wheezing, Heidi." He was a shade over six feet tall, rail thin, and had a bookish demeanor that reminded Buffy of Giles. He was pale, and his hair was both tightly curled and short. "Wait... just... no, start over. Is it moving? Heidi, is the thing breathing? Okay then, there you go. If its breathing then its not dead. Not if its breathing. What? God damn it, Heidi! You called me for... look, if its hopping around then it's really, really not dead. No, Heidi, I can tell you, when animals are dead, they generally stop hopping around! No, Heidi, don't... Heidi? Heidi? Damn it." He slammed the phone down and pinched his nose. He stayed like that before noticing Buffy. "Gah!" The man shrieked. It was a high, grating noise.

"Yes?" His entire face had morphed into the universal 'please don't hurt me' look of that combined stand-offishness with a need to not offend the one with whom you were speaking..

"Hi! I'm Buffy Summers, and..." She extended a hand toward him.

"We don't sell Harry Potter anything here," he said rapidly while stepping back from her.

"No, no. It's not that. I'm here about the job." She smiled wider, trying to seem friendly. Maybe if she came across as friendly, he's start actually being friendly.

"The job?" He looked at her if she had just started talking to him in Swahili.

"Sure, the one you've been advertising?"

He nodded vaguely at her. "Ah, right, the job." He gave her another once-over, and said, "Sorry, but I'm looking for someone who's graduated the 8th grade. And didn't make me nervous."

She looked down at herself. Tan slacks and a white sleeveless blouse. She'd picked them up at a hole-in-the-wall boutique about a block away, along with some comfortable but not too stylish pumps. What was he talking about?

_**AMUSEMENT**_

The man jumped, as if shocked. Buffy concentrated, and the Presence faded away to a dull throb. She watched as the bookstore owner visibly relaxed for the first time since they started talking.

_exasperation_

"I'll have you know that I'm twenty. Successfully graduated high school and everything. I'm even looking to restart college in the next semester."

"Restart?"

"Yeah, that was a bad time. My mother died, and I had to take care of my younger sister."

"Uh-huh. So you're taking care of your sister?"

"Not any more." She hoped that the dull tone with which she answered that question got the message across.

It seemed to, as he changed the subject. "Do you have any retail experience?"

"A little."

"A little? Really? Okay. Can you name all four books in the Alexandria Quartet?"

"The Alexandria Quartet? Are those books?"

"Yes. Those are books. Four of them, in fact. You see, working here, someone might actually ask you a question about books." He smirked at her.

"You know, you're right. Someone might ask me that question, at which point I'll smile and say, 'I can look it up on the computer for you!' I'm good with computers."

"You and everybody else. Everybody's good with computers. Everybody's attached at the hip to their cell phones and their online lives, but no one can form a cogent thought to save their lives. Go home."

"Please, I really need..."

"Look – what did you say your name was again?"

"Buffy. I'm Buffy Summers."

"Buffy? Really?" She nodded, which made the man pause. "And its Buffy, not Elizabeth?" Again, she nodded. "I'm Larry Mitchell. Did your mother name you?"

"Uh, yeah." _That was a rude question._

"Is your mother an aging flower child, or a fan of _Anne of Green Gables_?" Larry crossed his arms at her.

"Well, neither anymore. She died of an aneurysm. That's why I had to take care of my sister. But yeah, she was a fan of _Anne of Green Gables._"

For the longest time, he stood there, staring at her. "Look, I'm sorry, but no. Hiring you would only give me migraines. I'd be constantly ranting and raving about your shabby education and would very likely never respect you. Not even once. I'm sure a fragile ego like yours couldn't take it. Also, there is something about you that just creeps me out. I'm sorry."

"Oh, come on! Try me!" Buffy thought quickly. "Hey, was that your daughter on the phone?"

Larry's eyes narrowed. "No, it was my wife. An adult woman who is now hysterical because she thinks her rabbit is sick. So you see, I don't need to complicate my life with contact with any more adolescents. Especially creepy adolescents."

"I told you, I'm 20. And... and... if you hire me just for the afternoon, I can take care of the store and you can go take care of what was her name? Heidi? You can go take Heidi's rabbit to the vet. And when you get back, if the store is still standing and I haven't robbed you blind, you can hire me permanently!"

His eyes really narrowed. "I don't suppose you have any references, or, I don't know, ID?"

"Uh... no. Not at the moment. I lost it. That's one reason I need the job."

He stared some more, then moved around the counter. He stood before her and again, examined her.

"Don't steal anything. Don't take any checks. Don't give any refunds. I'll be back at six. There is a mini-fridge in the store room that has some bottles of water. There's a bathroom back there too, but if you have to go, please wait until there aren't any customers and lock the door before going."

"Oh, this is great... you're not going to regret this, I promise."

"I'm already regretting it. There is something about you that is seriously making my teeth ache." He stared at her, and she merely blinked back. "I'll be back by six. Don't murder anybody. Or if you do, do it outside of the shop away from the books." Behind Larry's back, Buffy looked guilty for a moment. But only a moment.

When he was gone, Buffy walked around the corner, humming. She hadn't expected it to be that easy! It didn't occur to her until she rang up her first sale that she never once discussed pay or benefits with Larry before he left.

**XxxxxxX**

"Do we know anything yet other than the obvious?" Dolph Storr stood in the living room of the tract house.

Zerbrowski recited from his notebook. "The vics are Bruno Webber, age 32, and his common law wife Sheila Webber, age 30. ME says that the preliminary causes of death are system shock caused by massive tissue loss for him, exsanguination following being stabbed for her. In other words, he got eaten, and she was stabbed and then bled to death."

"Eaten. Great. Just what we need." Storr's face was pinched.

"Fingerprint guys have been wracking up the points." Detective Perry read from his notebook. "Lots of old prints all over ever surface of the house, and a bunch of new ones. They're working on identifying the ones we have; shouldn't be too much longer. That blood-spatter lady, Fernandez, she says that she can't say yet without looking at the body after its been cleaned up in the morgue, but her preliminary opinion from an on-sight examination is that Bruno Webber got his self killed by a pack of shifters."

"A pack?" Anita Blake perked up at that. "Like a bunch of werewolves? If so, I'm going to have to call some people."

"No, not... I mean a group of shifters. From what she can tell after measuring claw sizes and such on the body, it looks like there was everything from rats to wolves to something huge, like a bear or a tiger involved in this. Again, she can't be certain, but it looks like there was at least three people involved in killing Bruno."

"Great. I'm still going to have to call someone." Blake started to pull out her phone, but Storr's hand stopped her.

"Wait until we're done here before giving Count Dracula the heads up, okay?" She stared at him, the anger clear on her face, but at always Storr ignored it. The fact that she couldn't intimidate him only made her angrier. And then he exacerbated it by turning away from her to address Perry and Zerbrowski.

"And the girl?"

Perry nodded. "Right. The girl was stabbed three times, twice in the throat once in the chest. Murder weapon is probably the knife we found next to the body. The guy who bagged it said that he spotted something unusual on it, but wanted to take it back to the lab to make sure." Before Storr could ask, he continued. "Said it looked like there were prints applied to the weapon before and after the murder, and they weren't the same prints. His best guess is one person stabbed her and then someone else picked up the knife and left it where we found it." The detective shrugged. "Might have pulled it out of her."

"Here's something really weird. Pieces of human flesh were found partially clogging the drain in the bathtub. None of it larger than about a dime, and most of it smaller. They also found a bloody palm print on the outside of the shower curtain. Their best guess is that it was left by a female no older than about 13 or 14." Zerbrowski finished with a wry grin.

"Apparently our pack of murdering werewolves recruits them young." Storr commented.

"I thought the ME said they weren't just werewolves?" Blake locked her eyes on Storr's. Neither gave an inch.

"Guys, rent a room already, okay? We have a couple of murders to solve." Both Blake and Storr turned their attention to Zerbrowski, who hastily adjusted his overly-loud tie. In what was actually a pretty good Rodney Dangerfield impression, he added, "Geez! Tough crowd, tough crowd."

"I got to make some calls." Blake pulled her cell phone and started dialing.

**XxxxxxX**

Larry had returned to the Skylight a little bit before six, as promised, and took the opportunity to watch Buffy deal with the customers before letting her know he was back. He handed her fifty dollars out of the cash register and told her to come back the next day, they opened at ten-thirty in the morning. He'd have some paperwork for her and they'd discuss hours and pay then. Buffy figured that if the fifty was anything to go on, she'd be making a little more than eleven dollars an hour, which wasn't bad for a book store gig.

His last question, asked just before she left, bothered her for some reason.

"Are you a lycanthope, Buffy?"

"Huh? Uh, no. Why? Do you have a problem with shifters? Because..."

Larry looked even more annoyed. "If you are, I need to know so I can schedule you around the full moon."

"Oh. Right. Uh, no, not a lycanthrope. Not exactly."

He seemed to study her. "But not precisely human."

"Uh..." Buffy didn't even try to deny it, but she also didn't want to go into it. "Look, I just... I haven't... its hard to explain."

Larry sighed and held his head. "Just answer me this: are you a danger to me, or my customers?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

"Are you going to need the nights of the full moon and the next day off?"

"Um..." Buffy had no clue how to answer that. She'd never changed into anything while she was in the glass bubble, but now that she was out, maybe things had changed? There were, after all, some pretty serious spells on that fishbowl.

"Right." He sighed. "Look, I've got no problem with weres. We'll work around it, all right? Now... you seemed to have not destroyed the store, and there's actually more money in the register than when I left. So... go on home. Come back tomorrow."

She decided to celebrate her new job with a real sit down dinner before heading back to the hotel room. She said goodbye to Larry and headed off in the general direction of her hotel room. She wasn't really thinking about it as she walked, just looking for a place to sit down and eat something better than a sackful of White Castle burgers. It was only when she was walking through the door and into the restaurant that she realized the Presence had been steering her to a specific location.

It looked like a diner, along the lines of a Steak and Shake. The sign read 'The Lunatic Cafe'. Buffy shrugged and went in. She knew almost immediately that doing so was a mistake if it was her goal to lie low and not attract attention.

_You bastard. You did this on purpose._

_amusement_

_That's not a denial!I_

_amusement_

Buffy looked around the main dining room. It wasn't crowded, but it was busy enough that she was glad she was by herself. And a good half of the people were shifters, mostly werewolves, including – as far as Buffy could tell – the entire wait staff and the cook who was working the grill behind the lunch counter.

Buffy stood in the door, conscious of how many of the customers were now looking at her, not sure how to proceed.

_DOMINATE_

_Shut up already! I just want to get something to eat, for God's sake! _A waitress approached – her name tag read 'Shelly' – and Buffy again couldn't help but notice that the woman was a werewolf.

"Just you tonight, honey?" She – Shelly – was giving Buffy as much as an intense examination as she thought she could get away with.

"Yeah, just me!" Buffy shrugged, trying to seem nonthreatening. She concentrated on putting a leash on the Presence and it toned down even further than it had when she was dealing with Larry and the bookstore customers.

"Sure. Come this way." Shelley led her toward a two-person table under one of the back windows and laid a menu on the table in front of her. Buffy picked it up and gave it a cursory look. The waitress pulled an order pad out of her apron, along with a pen. "What can I get you to drink, sweetie?"

"Can I get a diet coke? Um... do you have crushed ice or cubes?"

"Oh, um. Crushed."

"In that case, lots of ice, please." Buffy looked back at the menu. "So what's good tonight?"

"Well, the special is a Philly cheese-steak in a kaiser with fries or hash browns."

The idea didn't appeal to Buffy. "Oh, hey... says here you can get breakfast any time?" She looked up at Shelly. "In that case, can I get ah..." Buffy read off the menu. "... two three-egg Western omelets? And I'll have the hash browns and... sausage, is that patty or link? You know what? Doesn't matter, just bring me four pieces of whatever. Oh, and a double side order of pancakes, please. Got any fruit syrups?"

"We've got blueberry."

"Ooh, that'd be great." Buffy looked back at the menu. And can you bring me a pot of coffee and a glass of orange juice, too?"

"Sure thing. Anything else?" The woman looked as if she couldn't believe she was asking that question, given all the food Buffy ordered.

"Nope, that'll do it." Buffy handed the menu back. She took a quick glance around the inside of the diner, noting that every single werewolf in the place, as well as the four wererats and the lone weretiger were looking at her. They were either staring at her directly, as most of the wolves and the tiger were doing, or else were keeping an eye on her surreptitiously, as the rats were.

Buffy nodded at some, waved toward others. She received very few greetings in return.

_watch_

_So much for you being Mister Megaphone. What am I supposed to be watching?_

_watch_

She casually glanced around the dining room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was only when she looked at the area behind the counter did she see something notable. The waitress who took her order, Shelly, was talking rapidly into the diner's telephone, and wasn't bothering to hide the fact that she was staring right at Buffy while doing it.

"This can't be good. Not good at all." Buffy stared out the window, trying to ignore the fact that she was the center of attention. When Shelly returned with her order a few minutes later, Buffy couldn't help but ask. "Hey, uh, Shelly? Why am I on stage? Just trying to get a meal, you know? Not planning on yanking out a shotgun and going all Wild Bunch on everybody..."

The waitress turned to look at the man behind the counter, then at a couple of people in the crowd. Whatever she was looking for, she must have seen, because she sat down at the other chair. "Look, you seem nice, but nobody knows you. Which means either you're really new, or else you're invading without permission." Shelly's eyes got hard, but not hard enough to be a threat. "Either way, the local pack needs to know about you. So eat your dinner, but don't go anywhere. You're not going to be allowed to leave until someone talks to you. Probably the Ulfric, but maybe the Geri. I don't know who's coming."

_**DOMINATE!**_

Everyone within five feet of Buffy flinched.

"Not going to be _allowed?_ I'm not going to be – Lady if I wanted to leave..._"_ The tone of Buffy's voice caused Shelly to shy back. The nearest werewolves cringed I their seat as well. Buffy took several deep breaths and once again reined in the Presence. "Fine. Fine. I'll stay and talk to these Alfred and Jerry guys." She gave Shelly a look. "You got A1 sauce here?" At Shelly's confused look, she added, "You know... steak sauce?"

"Oh. Uh, yeah."

"Good. Bring me a bottle. Now."

Shelly the Waitress clearly understood a dismissal when she heard one. She rushed away from Buffy's table, only returning when she absolutely had to. Buffy gave the rest of the diner one last glare before she turned to her plate. She could feel the tension building around her. If this Alfred guy or his pal Jerry didn't show up soon, there was going to be a fight, and she seriously wasn't in the mood to kill thirty people tonight. She just wanted to eat her omelets and pancakes and live her life without any more drama than necessary.

No, what she _really_ wanted was to go home, but that didn't look like it was going to happen any time soon. So living her life with a minimum of drama seemed a good second choice.

Buffy was three-quarters of the way through her second omelet and was looking forward to the pancakes when she noted that the constant grumbling that had accompanied her meal had died down. A huge red-haired man was approaching her table, accompanied by a couple of guys who just screamed bodyguard. Buffy rolled her eyes at them and went back to her meal. The three men stood over her, watching her eat, before the redhead sat down in the other chair.

_challenge_

"I don't remember telling you could sit." Buffy said, just loud enough to be heard. There was a gasp from the nearby tables, and the two obvious bodyguards – one a nondescript Asian man, the other a very muscular black man with long corn-rowed hair. She hadn't looked at any of them yet. Instead, Buffy concentrated on her food. "Sitting at someone else's table without being invited is rude. I don't like rude. I tend to punish rude. Now, if you want to talk to me, try again. But be polite."

"Who are..."

Buffy raised a hand and shook her head, cutting him off. She could feel the man's glare. She ignored him. Without even glancing at him, Buffy popped the last bit of the omelet into her mouth and pulled the plate full of pancakes closer. As she spread the butter pats over the pancakes, she scanned the table for the syrup. It was just to the right of the redheaded man's elbow. Finally, Buffy looked at him. The man opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say word one, Buffy interrupted. "Would you please hand me the syrup?"

She could feel every werewolf within ten feet of her bristle. Buffy ignored it and continued buttering her pancakes. Finally, she put the knife down. Without the syrup, there wasn't any point in pushing the butter around anymore.

Buffy looked at the man again. "The syrup, please?" She nodded to the small-sized pitcher of blueberry syrup. "It's right there. You're closer to it, and my arms won't quite reach. This is the part where you start over by not being rude."

The man huffed at her, but handed her the syrup.

"Thanks." She forced herself to assume the cheerful valley girl persona she'd used on countless opponents before. And there was no doubt in her mind that this man was an opponent. Not necessarily in a fight, but if she was going to live free of the drama, she was going to have to get past this guy – and no telling how many others – to do that. She drowned the pancakes in the purple sugary goodness and started in on them. Around a mouthful of pancake, she asked, "So, are you this Alfred guy they told me was coming, or are you Jerry?"

"What?" The man looked shocked and confused. Buffy smirked; he was off-footed, and that made him vulnerable.

Buffy swallowed. "Are you Alfred or Jerry?" One bodyguard, the black guy, chuckled and shook his head.

"My name's Richard Zeeman." His teeth were gritted, and was clearly very angry. Buffy got the feeling that anger might be the guy's default setting. "I'm the Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Pack."

Buffy took another bite of her pancake. "Nice to meet you, Alfred." She chewed and swallowed. "See how much politeness works better than just being rude?"

He was still angry, but took the time to calm himself. "Its not Alfred, its Ulfric. And that's my title, not my name."

"Whatever." Buffy shrugged. "So what can I do for you?"

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"I'm Buffy, and I'm eating." Buffy gestured toward the rapidly emptying plate of pancakes.

"No, what are you doing in Saint Louis?"

"Right now, I'm eating pancakes. Oh, you mean in general." She chewed and swallowed the last bite of the pancake, then absently ran her finger through the syrup residue. She sucked on her finger before pushing the plate back. "That was really, really good. Hey, Shelly!" The waitress jerked up from where she was watching the confrontation. "Can I get a coffee refill? Sorry, what was the question again?"

Richard bristled. "What are you doing in Saint Louis?"

"Oh. Well, I just got a job, and I'm hoping to move out of the hotel and into an apartment soon. You know, the entire 'start my life over' thing. My family's gone, so its just me. I figure here's as good a place as any."

"You've been in Saint Louis long enough to find a job? You've been here without my permission that long?"

The man's cell phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, jabbing at the disconnect button.

"Your permission?" Buffy scoffed. "What, I suddenly need ti ask the permission of someone I never even met to live in a new city and to get a job and look for an apartment? This is America, Alfred. Not feudal Europe. I'm an American citizen. The US Constitution says I have a right to live wherever I want. The First Amendment says so. Or maybe the Fourth. Whichever one deals with privacy. So where the hell do you get off telling other people where they can and can't live, fathead?"

The man was obviously seething. "You being here without asking for my approval is a threat to my dominance. Just walking around, you challenge me by not following the rules. What pack are you from, that they didn't teach you this?" Again, the cell phone went off. This time, the guy turned it completely off. Buffy heard him growl something about a woman named Anita and how it wasn't the time, but decided it didn't matter.

"Pack? I'm not from any pack."

"Well," the red-head muttered, smugly. "That certainly explains why you're so ignorant."

Buffy ignored the jab. "Oh, hey... I did have a question. I was doing some research earlier and I did find a little bit about pack structure and it seemed odd to me."

Richard blinked at the digression. "What?"

"Yeah. I mean, according to this professor at Washington University, the animal a lycanthrope turns into affects how he behaves and interacts, especially with other weres, right?"

"What's your point?"

"Wolves don't act like you guys are acting." Buffy just laid it out on the table.

"What?"

"Yeah. Wolf packs are ruled by a dominant pair who mate for life. There's no constant struggle for dominance and there's not a lot of polygyny. A real wolf pack is like an extended family run by grampa and grandma, with the kids and the grandkids included. Real wolves don't act like you guys act. For that matter, neither do leopards. Leopards are solitary animals. They don't form packs at all. In fact, real leopards prefer to live alone unless they get together to have babies. So what the hell is up with the wereleopards and the pards? Its like, the only weres who know what they're doing are the hyenas. From what I've read, they're actually acting like real hyenas do."

Richard started to open his mouth, but Buffy beat him to it, again.

"And while we're on the subject, what's with this combat to the death stuff to establish leadership?" Buffy shook her head. "Real wolves don't do that. They fight until one gives up or can't fight anymore, and the dominant one stays and the weaker one acknowledges the others superiority and gets to live to try again later. Not a lot of murder among wolves in the wild.

"I've got no idea what you're talking about."

Buffy gave him a hard glare, and he returned it, flashing his teeth at her. She rolled her eyes, instantly dismissing him. "Tone down the testosterone, Conan. It doesn't impress me."

Zeeman stared at her, breathing carefully through his nose in an obvious attempt to control his anger. "Pack law, recognized in every werewolf pack on the continent and around the world, demands that when you move into a new territory controlled by another pack, you have to ask their Ulfric for permission to stay and join the pack." He did another round of 'deep breath and calm'. "You were talking about being rude earlier? Introducing yourself to the local Ulfric is polite. Get it now?"

"Well. In that case, I'd like to apologize to you for my rudeness. I didn't know, and would like to make up for my error. Like I said, I'm Buffy. Would you like some coffee?" Buffy lowered the snark level. She dumped the requisite sugar and milk into her coffee and took a sip. Then another, still waiting. "Its customary when you're being rude to apologize. I just apologized to you. Its your turn to apologize to me."

"You seriously don't get how much trouble you're in, do you? You're rogue. You're outlaw. You've got no one supporting you and you're outside of pack law. Any one of these wolves could kill you without a moment's notice and no one would do anything about it other than congratulating them for putting down an outsider who was threatening the stability of the pack." Richard leaned forward and smiled wide at her, trying to assert his dominance. In the wild, showing your teeth was a threat. He reached across the table and grabbed her by the wrist. Her coffee slopped out of the cup, spilling on her new work clothes. "And then tonight, ever since I walked in, you've been blatantly challenging my authority and refusing to recognize my dominance as Ulfric. I'd be within my rights to gut you like a trout right now and leave your body hanging from a light-post."

_**DOMINATE**_

The werewolves all jumped, except for Richard. Richard just widened his teeth-baring smile. Buffy didn't even attempt to quiet the voice of the Presence, but she fought off the urge to leap across the table and kill the man. It wasn't conducive to her plans, and she knew it. She couldn't lose it here like she did with Bruno, not if she wanted to be left alone.

_**DOMINATE**_

_Right. _Buffy stared into Richard's eyes, a blatant challenge, and let her teeth get long. She grinned at him, showing her fangs. Buffy tried to see another way out, but Alfred wasn't giving her an out. He wasn't accepting her offer of a diplomatic solution. So she tried a counter-threat. "Let go of my wrist, right now, or I'll take your arm off at the shoulder and use it to beat your bodyguards to death while you're bleeding." When Richard made no move to remove his hand, she nodded. She closed her eyes, not wanting to do what she was about to do. When she opened them again, she said, "Okay. If that's how you want it, that's how we'll play it."

Moving faster than any of the wolves thought was possible, Buffy grabbed the hand holding her wrist. She pried Richard's fingers away from her through the simple expedient of breaking all four of them all at once. Richard began to howl in pain, yanking his hand back and cradling it to his chest. His fingers were bent the wrong way, at nearly an eighty-degree angle to the palm. At the same time, Buffy was suddenly on her feet. She kicked the table she'd been sitting at into the Asian bodyguard while snatching the still howling Richard out of his chair by the neck with one hand. With the other hand, Buffy grabbed the chair Richard had been sitting at and smashed it across the face of the black bodyguard. She lifted Richard into the air and slammed him into the diner's back wall and held him there.

"I tried to be nice, Alfred! I tried to be polite! I told you that I wanted no part in your bullshit! When you pointed out how I violated your 'pack law' I offered an apology and asked what would make up for it. But you wouldn't just let it go, so here we are." She pulled him away from the wall, then slammed him back into it. His head caused a crater in the drywall, and some of the framed photographs decorating the place hit the floor. The two bodyguards had jumped to their feet, but they hesitated to approach. Buffy wasn't sure why they weren't attacking, and she wasn't sure it would hold, but it gave her a moment to think.

None of the other lycanthropes in the diner were moving. Not one of them. Not the rats, not the wolves, and not the lone tiger. They were all staring at her.

She turned back to Richard Zeeman, who was clawing at her arm with his own hands. His lips were beginning to acquire a blue tinge and his eyes were fluttering. Buffy slammed him into the wall a third time, and this time the drywall cracked and fell, leaving a hole.

"Are you done, Alfred? Is this fight over?" He gave one last attempt to pull her hand away, then started nodding desperately. Buffy shook him a moment, like she was a terrier and he was a rat, and then let go. He dropped him like sack of potatoes, gasping for air and holding his neck.

Buffy turned back to the diner. No one was moving, no one was speaking. Everyone's eyes were on her, but no one was meeting her eyes. "Anyone else want a piece of me? Anyone? Come on! Now's your chance!" Almost everyone looked away, looked at the floor, the tables, anywhere but at her. Buffy turned back to Richard, still sitting at the base of the wall between the overturned tables. "You want anymore?"

Richard didn't say anything. Instead, he pushed off the wall and crawled to her on all fours. When he'd reached her, he presented his throat.

_**PREY**_

_**PUNISH**_

KILL

_No. I'm not going to just kill him after he surrendered. _Buffy stared at Richard, sitting at her feet. Without thinking about it, she knelt until her face was on a level with his, and then bit him on the nose. She held it just long enough to get the message across, then stood again.

Buffy stood. Again, no one was meeting her eyes. "Somebody help Alfred into the men's room, get him cleaned up." As an afterthought, she added, "When you're done, get him to a doctor, to see about his fingers.

One of the bodyguards, the Asian, stepped forward. "Ulfrana, you're going to let him live?"

_Ulfrana? Shit... did I just..._

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_**AFFIRMATION**_

Buffy slowed her breathing, and while doing so put the muzzle back on the Presence. "Great. Just wanted to live my life, and now I'm a Wolf Queen." She looked at the Asian bodyguard. "What's your name?"

"Shang-Da Yang. I am, I mean, I was, Richard's Hati." At her blank look, he added "His enforcer, and bodyguard."

"And you?" Buffy turned to the black man, who was still watching her. "Who are you?"

"Jamil Turner. I was Skoll to Richard." The black man was studying her. "Are you going to let us live? Richard and the two of us?"

"I don't feel like killing anyone right now, and I think I made my point." At their nervous looks, she sighed. "Look, I really did just want to live my life and be left alone. I didn't come here looking to pick a fight. I certainly didn't want to take over a werewolf pack"

"But you have." Jamil responded, his eyes narrowing.

"Yeah, apparently I have. And I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. I'm serious when I say I wasn't with a pack before. I only know what I read online about traditions and law and such. But I do know if I don't take the spot, I'm fucked because Richard will then be forced to try to kill me just to protect his position as Alpha since I already kicked his ass. But I don't want to just go around slaughtering anyone who looks at me funny and I need people I can rely on. Can I rely on you two, or do I have to rip your throats out?"

Shang-da shrugged and looked at Jamil, who returned the glance. "I don't want my throat ripped out. I'll work with you until you do something to endanger the pack."

Buffy looked down at Richard, who was still at her feet. He was looking up at her, mutely, as if not sure what was going on. Gently, she ran a hand through his hair. "How about you? Can you work with me?"

No one said a word, but eventually Richard nodded. "Yes, Ulfrana."

_amusement_

"Okay, then." She helped Richard to his feet and handed him off to Shang-Da. "Like I said, take him in the back and get him cleaned up. Shelly..." The waitress almost jumped to attention. "Come help me straighten this up. I'm sorry about the mess. And you, what's your name?" She pointed to another waitress.

"Uh, Paula. My name's Paula."

"Hi Paula, I'm Buffy. Can you bring me another pot of coffee? Jamil and I here need to have a long chat." She sat down in the closest chair and rubbed both hands down her face. What in the hell did she just drop herself into, she wondered.

**XxxxxxX**

_**September 3, 1939**_

_**Chicago, Illinois**_

_On the same day that France and Great Britain declared war on Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, Luther Black presided over a Black Mass in a hidden temple he'd built in a secret subbasement of the Masonic Temple. On the wall behind him, a crucifix hung inverted, and on the altar in front of him, Dick Danger lay insensible and spread-eagle, chained at the wrists and ankles. The sacrifice took place in the last of Luther Black's temples – he had spent the last few years abandoning his plans for further expansion of his cult, and had been rapidly rolling up his own network of agents and cultists._

_He had already lost the Berlin temple to Hitler and his cronies. That mincing side-show act Heinrich Himmler had managed to infiltrate, subvert, and co-opt the temple for the Nazi Party's own use. They had assassinated all of the cultists who were truly loyal to Luther Black, and had enlisted most of the others into the Reich's own occult projects._

_The Shanghei temple, on the other hand, hadn't been infiltrated. It had merely been overrun by invaders, and everyone in it slaughtered. The Japanese sorcerer who called himself the Father of Lightning had commanded a force of mystically enhanced martial artists who had simply broken down the temple's doors and killed everyone they came across until the facility was theirs. It didn't matter. Shanghei had become a swirling cesspool of espionage and intrigue between the nations warring in Asia anyway, and Black had already begun plans to shut it down. The loss of so many promising cultists was disappointing, but they could be replaced._

_With what looked like a truly world-wide war looming, Black knew that it was only a matter of time before the Paris and London temples went the way the Berlin and Shanghei temples did, so he was cutting his losses early. Only the temples in Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles remained secure. The problem was, his Novus Ordo, the source of the majority of his cult's funding, was defunct. Those few among the idle rich who'd survived the Great Depression with their fortunes intact were turning their eyes toward Europe and were choosing sides, as well as suddenly remembering that they were patriotic American citizens._

_Luther Black clearly recalled the Great War, and needed no divinatory magic to realize that if the coming war in Europe combined with the current war in Asia, there was no way the United States would ever remain neutral. No way at all. So he deemed it better that he and his followers lie dormant through the coming years of war. Let the world sort itself out, and once it had, he would be waiting._

_Using dark magicks, Black programmed his followers in Los Angeles with instructions to infiltrate the rapidly developing film industry. In New York, they were programmed to worm their way into Wall Street. But he had other plans for Chicago._

_Throughout the previous fourteen years, Dick Danger had turned himself into a huge thorn in the side of Luther Black and his cult. The detective wasn't satisfied with forgetting the horrors he had witnessed, and had become obsessed with bringing the cultists who had been the perpetrators of the Dog Days Murders down._

_At the same time, Luther Black knew that the detective had been there when a hole had been torn through the fabric of Creation, and thus was not a resource that could merely be tossed away. The cult's last act before the close of the 1930s was to set a trap for their most active and irritating foe._

_Again, a brutal murder spree struck Chicago, the victims and the positions of their corpses exactly as it had been before. Dick Danger convinced Patrick Monaghey and Adler Gerich to come out of retirement for one last case: finding and stopping the madman who'd worked such horror in the world years prior. Unbeknownst to Danger, the two men had already been subverted; both former police detectives had spent the intervening fourteen years struggling against the corruptive influence of the Qliphothic energies that had tainted their souls – and had lost._

_In the end, the two men had fallen victim to the evil of the Shining Darkness. They betrayed Dick Danger, and in the end there would be no last minute escape. Bound to the altar beneath the Masonic Temple, surrounded by cultists chanting the Black Mass, Dick Danger found himself a sacrifice in a ritual created to guarantee the cult's rebirth after the war._

_Luther Black stood over the helpless detective, but did not hold a sacred knife. There would be no bloodletting in this sacrifice. Instead, the sorcerer held the Crystal Skull, an artifact found in Belize in 1927, which a cult member had stolen and replaced with a forgery. In the sacrifice, Luther Black put the skull to use. Drawing upon its mystic powers, Black tore Dick Danger's soul from his body and cast it screaming into the outer darkness, beyond the last reward promised by the outer realms of the Creation as a payment of sorts for services rendered by the Shining Darkness in the decades to come._

_With the man's soul torn from his body, Luther Black called upon the power of the Qliphothic to reanimate Dick Danger, its mystic significance intact after having its soul torn out. Dick Danger would rise again to become the right hand of Luther Black and the enforcer of the sorcerer's will._

_Calling on his own sense of the dramatic, Black dubbed his new minion 'Arlecchino'. The Harlequin._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime noir stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Pendleton Legacy_ by August Derleth is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second: **_Joan of Arcadia_ is the jointly-held property of Barbara Hall Productions and CBS Productions, in association with Sony Pictures Television.

**Author's Note the Third:** Paulo Coelho's novel _Veronika Decides to Die_ was released in 1998. Its an interesting story about finding value in the very act of living. It was made into a movie in 2009; the film version stars David Thewlis and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

**Author's Note the Fourth:** As originally plotted, this chapter did not end with Buffy taking over the Thronnos Rokke pack. But for some reason I cannot explain, her natural sarcastic nature combined with the influence of the Sineya Presence and Richard Zeeman's tendency to be a touchy little prick naturally flowed into her utterly kicking his ass. And as everyone knows, if you kick the Ulfric's ass, you become the new Ulfric. Or Ulfrana, which, by the way, is the female version of Ulfric.


	4. The Queen in Yellow

**The Queen in Yellow**

**XxxxxxX**

"_Remember your manners: etiquette will be important where we go, and good manners are gold. For a trivial impoliteness you could find yourself gifted with asses ears, or worse." – **Neil Gaiman**, "The Books of Magic"_

**XxxxxxX**

_**September 7, 1944**_

_**New York City, New York**_

_Luther Black sat, silently watching the moving pictures on the screen. He had always been a devotee of the theater, and had made the transition from being a fan of plays to being a fan of movies with an ease that would have surprised and outraged certain Broadway theater snobs._

_The film he'd come to see was a Bing Crosby musical comedy called 'Going My Way.' He'd heard good things, very good things, and was looking forward to it. Luther Black never would have admitted it, but he was a fan of Bing Crosby. Not only did the man have fantastic comic timing and a velvet voice, Black happened to know that the man was also a sadistic monster who regularly terrorized his children. The dichotomy between Crosby's public persona as "everyone's favorite uncle" and his private truth as a child abuser made Black feel all warm inside._

_Luther Black carefully balanced his fedora on his knee after the woman sitting behind him respectfully asked that he remove it. With fingers steepled under this chin, he chuckled at the antics of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck along with the rest of the audience. And then the news reels began._

_With great concentration, Luther Black watched as the sepia-toned films bugled Allied triumphs in Europe over the despicable Nazi hordes: the defeat by heroic FBI agents of a cadre of Nazi saboteurs intent on destroying the New York Port Authority. Pictures of American soldiers rolling into Paris, having defeated the German occupiers of that city the month before. As the voice-over related the exploits of America's home-grown heroes and how they had furthered the cause of freedom and democracy, Luther Black realized that the War would be ending soon._

_It was almost time to come out of hiding._

**XxxxxxX**

_**October 8, 1996**_

**Saint Louis, Missouri**

Anita Blake growled at her cell phone. Richard was once again being a child. The first time she called him, the call had connected only to immediately disconnect. The second time, it had gone straight to voice mail. Same with the third. She didn't actually leave a message until the fifth call, and even then it was just a quickly delivered, "Richard call me back right now."

By the ninth call, she was getting tired of his bullshit. There was a demon loose, not to mention a pack of murderous weres, and he was playing his usual game of "I don't want to talk to you unless I need something from you." For a moment, Anita considered calling around to find out where he was just so she could bitch him out in person.

She had just started dialing for the tenth time when she felt it. Something hot and angry and violent and powerful seeping through the marks from Richard... but it wasn't Richard. It was something else. Something _other_. The mere fact that it was, that it existed, that it was there at all offended her. Its existence offended her. It _shouldn't_, but it _did_. And it was creeping at her through the marks Jean-Claude had placed on Richard Zeeman.

Anita collapsed, her legs unable to bear her weight. Whatever I_t_ was ate at her, stealing her strength. She barely noticed Detective Storr catch her as she fell, did not notice being guided into a chair. Did not hear questions about her state of being. All she could feel, hear, see, was the _It._ Whatever it was, clawing its way through Richard's marks at her.

And then whatever it was, was gone.

She could no longer feel Richard through the marks, even the small amount of connection allowed by the psychic blocks Richard had thrown up over them. It was like he had been erased. It it weren't for the fact that she could still feel the marks themselves, she'd have thought he died.

_Ma chere, what was that? What has happened to mon loupe? Why can I no longer feel him?_ Jean-Claude sent through the marks.

_I'm fine, thank you for asking. _Trust Jean-Claude to be worried about how whatever it was affected himself. _And I have no idea. Something... something's wrong with Richard. We need to find him._

"Blake, you okay?" It was Storr. It took Anita a moment to realize that he'd been in front of her all along. "You need a doctor? Zerbrowski, get her over to the hospital."

_I will try and locate him through my channels. You use yours, ma petite. Call me and let me know if you find him. And if you need to come to the Circus for safety, the door is open._

"No, no hospital." Anita stood, but was shaky. "I need to get out of here. Something's happened. Something... something's wrong."

_Fine, Jean-Claude. I'll call you in half an hour, regardless._

"What? What's the matter?"

"It's... it's got to do with the local werewolves, Storr." She knew that would shut him up. "I'll call you when I find out what's going on." Anita forced herself to straighten, then walk out without falling. She could feel Zerbrowski following her out.

"Hey, Anita, you really do look like shit. How about you let us get you to a doctor anyway?"

"Can't. I've got to take care of this now." As she climbed into her truck, she dialed Sylvie, the Thronnos Rokke pack's Geri. The werewolf picked up on the fourth ring.

"_This had better be really damned important, Anita."_ Sylvie's voice was ragged with irritation. The two women just didn't get along all that well, though they did maintain a sort of Cold War-esque mutual respect.

"It is. I just felt something through the marks, something involving Richard, and now I can't feel him at all." Anita started the vehicle, then pulled out into the light evening traffic. "The marks are still there, but it's like he's gone. I need to find him. Do you know where..."

"_Yeah. I do. Not that it's any of your business anymore, but according to Shang-Da he got into a dominance fight with someone and lost. Hard. Shang-Da took him to see Lillian."_

"Oh, shit." Anita pulled a U-turn, heading for the Dr. Lillian's clinic. If Richard fought a challenger and lost, the man could be dying. He was an asshole, but she wasn't so cold-hearted that she just wanted him to die. "Wait... he's not Ulfric anymore? And what do you mean it's not my business. I'm the pack's Lupa!" Her mind reeled. Jean-Claude was definitely not going to like having his triumvirate rendered moot, not to mention his political control over the Thronnos Rokke pack.

"_You were Richard's Lupa, Anita. Now, you're just the ex-girlfriend of one of the pack's alphas. Hell, I doubt you're still Balverk. You know how this works."_ Anita did know. The challenger wasn't going to officially be the new Wolf King until he faced the alphas and dominated them all. Richard, being the loser, still had status as an alpha, but his being hurt in the challenge was no one's concern but his friends.

And if Sylvie hadn't been present during the challenge, she would be heading to face the new guy right now. It was required for her to retain her place as the pack's second, it's Geri. If she didn't stake her claim, someone else could slide it right out from under her. If she confronted the challenger and lost, the new Ulfric's position would be that much more stable, and her position as Geri would also. If she confronted the challenger and _won_, Sylvie would be the new Ulfric. Or whatever you called a Wolf Queen who ran her own pack.

"Who made the challenge?" Anita ran through the list of the pack's alphas. Aside from maybe Jamil, she couldn't figure any of them being able to take Richard down, and Jamil wasn't that ambitious. Jamil was the type of man who wanted to be the guy the actual guy counted on. "Where are they now, Sylvie?"

Jean-Claude would want to confront this person as soon as possible. There was no way the Master of the City would just let this lie without trying to get leverage on the new pack leader.

"_Anita, what part of it's not your business anymore went past your basic ability to comprehend?"_

Anita's phone went silent as Sylvie hung up. She threw the phone into the passenger seat, then beat her palm on the SUV's steering wheel. God damned bitch! Who the hell did she think she was, anyway?

_Ma petite! What is it that has you so angry? What have you found?_

The vampire was projecting a feeling of calm through the marks, but it wasn't helping much. _Richard was challenged for leadership of the pack tonight and lost. He is no longer Ulfric._

_What?!_ And now all Anita could feel was Jean-Claude's own anger, confusion, and outrage. _Mauviette idiot! Comment ose-t'il permettre aux loups d'echapper a mon controle? Que Dieu maudisse lex yeux!_

Anita shuddered. It was never a good sign when Jean-Claude lost control and lapsed back into French.

_Who did this? Who ruined the triumvirate? Who broke my allegiance with les loups?_

_I don't know. Sylvie told me it's no longer my concern, and she has a point. With Richard no longer Ulfic, I'm no longer Lupa, and there is a question about whether or not I'm even Balverk._

There was a period of silence before Jean-Claude continued. _I am sending Asher to you. Find this interloper and bring them to me, immediatement!_

Anita gritted her teeth. There were times when she hated Jean-Claude, and most of those times revolved around his treating her like nothing but a servant. She couldn't literally hate him; unfortunately bearing the four marks meant that she had no real choice but to loved him and follow his every command. She was a puppet who couldn't truly object, but she didn't have to like it and often didn't.

_I'm going to Lillian's clinic. Have him meet me there._ She was going to check on Richard first, regardless of what Jean-Claude wanted.

**XxxxxxX**

After Buffy had sent Shang-Da off with Richard to find a doctor, she motioned Jamil to a corner table and waved for another cup of coffee. Most of the shifters in the place had left, and the ones that had remained have switched tables until they were close enough to at least keep an eye on her if not actually overhear what she and the Skoll were saying.

Most of the stragglers were werewolves. They'd taken up positions around Buffy and Jamil as if awaiting her proclamations as Queen. It actually took Buffy a few minutes to realize that this was _precisely_ what they were doing.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

Everyone around her flinched, and Buffy shoved the presence back into a dark corner of her head.

The lone weretiger was prolonging a coffee pot of his own, reading and rereading a newspaper while glancing at Buffy and Jamil every so often. Likewise, only one of the wererats had stuck. She was sitting at a table that gave her an excellent view of Buffy and her new Skoll while likewise remaining respectfully distant.

"Ever have one of those days where it ended up a long, long way from where it started?" Buffy sipped her coffee and watched Jamil over the edge of the cup. "I mean, seriously. When I woke up today I don't think I could possibly have imagined suddenly being in charge of a werewolf pack."

The man chuckled. "Yeah, I can see that." He stared at Buffy for a moment. "So. You wanted to talk to me." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yeah. I don't know anything about being in charge of a bunch of werewolves. You seem to know what's going on so I figured you'd be a good guy to hit up for information."

"Fair enough. What do you want to know?"

"What happens if I turn it down?" Buffy took another sip of her coffee. "Like I said, I didn't plan on taking over a werewolf pack. I don't know if I have time for it. I'm trying to put my life back together, and this is just adding stress where it's not wanted."

"If you turn your back on the pack now that you've taken down the Ulfric? War." Jamil was no longer chuckling. "The alphas will fall on each other. No one would accept Richard back as Ulfric, now that he's been dethroned. Your ass would be targeted by every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanting to show themselves to be the big dog." Jamil paused. "No pun intended, of course."

_amusement_

_Would you shut up already? _Buffy tried to push the presence even further back. "You're saying that since I beat Richard, they'll come for me even if I don't take over, just to show that they're tougher than I am?" Buffy shook her head. "Dominance games. It's like I'm in High School gym class all over again." Jamil just shrugged.

"Great." She finished her coffee and stared into the bottom of the cup. "Even if I turn my back on it, I'm in everyone's sights anyway. Might as well take the job then." She looked up into Jamil's eyes. "There's got to be more to it than just beating up the old Alfred, right?"

"Ulfric. It's Norwegian for 'wolf', and yes, there's more to it. You've got to stand in front of the whole pack at the lupanar – "

"What's a loopie thingy?"

"A what?" Jamil stopped, his train of thought blown.

"The loopy thingy. You said I had to stand up in front of the pack at the loopy thingy."

"Jesus, you're so fresh you still have new-car smell." Jamil snorted and shook his head. His eyes closed for a moment as he pictured the reaction if this girl called it a 'loopy thingy' while she was actually there. "Lupanar. Loo-pan-arr. It's like our holy ground. The lupanar is like our tribal land. It's an area way out of town in the woods, where we can run around as wolves during the and make the claim. No one else uses it without an invitation."

"Lupanar. Fine. So I stand up in front of everyone and tell them...

"You tell them you're claiming the throne." Jamil poured himself some more coffee. "And then -"

"There's a throne?" Buffy interrupted a second time. At Jamil's sour expression, she added a sheepish, "Sorry about that."

"Yes, there's a throne. Throne Rock, to be exact. It's a big lump of granite that's had a seat carved into it. The rock is where the Thronnos Rokke pack gets it name."

"Thronnos Rokke? Really? The pack is named after..." Buffy was going to giggle until Jamil gave her another sour look.

"You should take these things seriously, or at least respectfully. You don't come at this from a position of respect, you're going to have everyone go rogue on you."

"Right. I'll be all respecty-girl from now on. And I apologize for interrupting you. You were saying?"

"I was saying that you need to claim the throne, name yourself Ulfrana, and then you invite any challengers to your claim to step forward, if there are any."

"You say if there are any, but you and I both know there's going to be challengers. My luck isn't that good."

"Of course there are going to be challengers. You're an outsider, and no one knows you. If I were you, I'd plan on confronting all the alpha's except Richard, me, Shang-Da, and anyone who was here tonight and watched the fight making a play."

"I get why Richard's out of the running, but why would you and Shang-Da hold off? And why would watching the fight – oh. I think I get it."

Jamil shrugged. "We all saw the fight, and we know whether or not we could have beaten Richard. So we don't need to challenge you. Now, not all these challenges are going to be fights, but you should expect a couple. Even if everyone else submits, Sylvie has got to challenge you if she wants to keep her position in the pack. As it is, your taking the top spot is going to throw a lot of things into confusion."

"Who's Sylvie?"

"She's the Geri." At Buffy's confused look, he added, "Richard's second-in-command. Like I said, if she wants to stay Number Two, she's got to fight you. Even if going in she knows you're going to kick her ass, she has to fight you. It's going to be bad enough for her, because once all the alphas come after you, there's going to be some who'll take a shot at her."

_anticipation_

"I don't have to kill her, right?" Buffy had decided, after negligently causing the death of Sheila, and killing Bruno is a rage, that she was going to try, at least, to avoid killing people unnecessarily. "I mean, it's not strictly necessary for me to kill her, just beat her?"

Jamil shrugged again. "Not strictly necessary? No. I does happen sometimes anyway, but no, it's not necessary."

"Good." Buffy pushed the cooling pot of coffee away and waved toward Shelly. "Can I get some ice water, please?" The waitress nodded and went about her work. "So after I make all the alphas cry, I take the throne. Then what?"

"Then you lead the pack."

"But what's that mean?"

"Well, you're the person the pack will turn to if something comes up that a decision needs to be made about. Someone goes rogue, or there's a wolf in town causing trouble, or if two members of the pack are getting into it with each other and it causes problems with the pack. Or if we need to negotiate something with a pack from another area. And of course, the biggest thing you're going to have to deal with is the Master of the City."

"The Master of the City is the head vampire guy, right?"

"Yeah. And we're his animal to call. He can control and command wolves, both the natural kind and the were kind. A lot of vampires can do that. You're just about the only thing standing in front of the pack and enslavement by the blood-suckers."

_**RAGE!**_

This time, surprisingly, no one flinched or jumped. Jamil did push himself back away from the table by an inch. He wasn't sure what just happened, but knew that the new Ulfrana – he still couldn't get over the fact that her name was _Buffy_ of all things – had a burning anger in her eyes where there was none before.

"I'm not going to tolerate that. That's done." She said through gritted teeth. "There's not going to be any wolf servant to a vampire. Spread the word." She raised her voice so it covered the rest of the dining room. "Everybody spread the word. The wolves aren't slaves to the vampires anymore."

"I'm sorry, Ulfrana, I think it's a pretty sentiment, but I also think it's going to be damned hard to enforce." At her look, Jamil held up a hand. "I mean, some members of the pack work for Jean-Claude. Like, he pays them and they work the 9 to 5."

"Fine. If he's paying them, and they're getting benefits and are treated like human beings with rights and everything, fine. As long as they aren't being used as canon fodder in some sort of crime. No vampirey crime stuff for my wolves."

"Heh. I'm sure he's going to love hearing that. Hell, he's likely to explode just hearing that his puppet wolf is no longer in charge." Jamil narrowed his eyes at her. "I'd expect that as soon as he hears there's a new Big Bad Wolf in town, he's going to send someone to retrieve you so he can take your measure. Jean-Claude isn't going to be happy you've been living in his city without his permission."

"Yeah, well, it's not his city city. And I don't need his permission to live here any more than I needed Richard's. I'm an Los Angeles girl, born and bred in California. That makes me a US citizen, just like this Jean-Claude guy is, from what I've read. I've got rights, and he doesn't have the authority to take that away from me."

"How do you mean?" Jamil asked.

"I mean that if things come down to it, I'll sue his ass for violating my civil rights. I mean, he calls himself the Master of the City. Guy's got to be loaded, right? I'm betting I could get a competent lawyer drooling over the idea of suing this guy."

"You'd sue the..." That's as far as he got before Jamil started laughing. "That's epic. That's absolutely epic."

Buffy grinned back at him. "Make the system work for us, right?"

"Sure."

"So any other pitfalls I need to watch out for? People who will be gunning for me just because I exist? I mean, besides the head vampire guy and the other alpha werewolves?"

"Well, the leaders of the other shifter groups are going to want to check you out. Especially that fucking nutcase Narcissus." At Buffy's curious look, Jamil added, "Sado-masochistic asshole who leads the hyenas.. When I tell you he gets off on hurting people, I mean it literally. He a completely twisted little fuck who will mess you up just to watch you squirm, and will be jerking off on you while he's doing it."

"Thanks for the wonderful mental imagery."

"You're welcome." Jamil continued. "Now Rafael, the rat-king, he's not too bad a guy, but he always looks out for his own first. He can be trusted to keep his word, but he doesn't often get it. Micah, the guy who leads the wereleopards, well he's just a complete bundle of separate problems. And then there's _her_."

"Her?"

"Yeah, _her._" Jamil shook his head. "Anita Blake. She's a federal marshal and a licensed vampire executioner. She's also a bad-tempered, conceited bitch who thinks the entire fucking world revolves around her and her personal problems. She's likely going to shoot you, and she'll do it because you said the wrong thing or didn't answer her question the way she wanted, or hell, maybe just because you beat Richard in a fist-fight. And boy does she love to get her gun off. Personally, I think she cums every time she hears a gun go off, so that's why she does it so often."

"And again with the wonderful mental image. She sounds like a lovely person."

"Oh yeah, she's a peach. She'll be seeing you sooner than you want to. You see, she's not just the local executioner, she's also Richard Zeeman's ex." Buffy gave him a blank look. Jamil smiled. "He booted her to the curb after she cheated on him with Jean-Claude."

"God. Sex with vampires is never a good idea." Buffy shook her head. "What the hell was she thinking, I wonder."

"I don't think she was doing a lot of thinking."

"Think she's crazy or something?"

"Wouldn't doubt it a bit if she was. And get this. Not only is she Jean-Claude's human servant, she used to be the Thronnos Rokke Lupa. And get this: she also fucked her way into the female leadership position of the local wereleopard pard. Bitch can't keep her legs closed."

"Sounds like she discovered sleeping her way to the top works." Buffy rolled her eyes. A thought occurred to her. "Wait, you said she was Richard's ex. He didn't make her, like, the Wolf Queen, did he?"

"The Lupa? Yeah, but after the break-up he took it away from her. She's still the Balverk, though."

"Balverk?"

"Executioner. When the Ulfric, or in your case, Ulfrana, doesn't want to get his, or in your case, her hands dirty killing someone who needs killing, they turn it over to the Balverk."

"I don't want one of those. Don't need one, don't want one." Buffy said. "For two reasons. First, I don't anticipate executing anyone, what with all of us being law-abiding citizens. Murder is a crime, remember? And second, there was something I read once in this book my friend Xander lent me. It went, '_A king who uses executioners soon forgets the face of death' _or something. Can't remember exactly, but the basic idea is that if it isn't you getting your hands dirty, it might become too easy for you to just order somebody killed. You get the idea. If I do have to order someone killed, I'll do it myself."

_approval_

"Sensible policy." All around them were nodding heads. Buffy smirked. Apparently she met with people's approval. She rubbed at her forehead, and leaned forward. "Jamil, do you know what time it is?"

"Uh, yeah... almost 8:30."

"Right. I need to get back to my room." She felt grimy from the day. The shower she took at Bruno and Shelly's was long gone. "Guess I'm going to have to brave the public shower after all."

"I suppose I can give you a ride. Where are you staying?"

"I've got a room at the Parliament Hotel. Know where it is?"

"That roach-trap? Yeah, I know where it is. It's a hooker hostel. Rents rooms by the hour."

"That's the one." Buffy nodded as she stood. Jamil followed her away from the table. "I hate it, but it is all I can afford right now."

"Not anymore." Jamil responded. There are some bank accounts that are for the benefit of the pack; you know, if someone gets hurt and needs a hand or something. Paying for the operational costs of the Cafe and so on. Richard'll give you the information eventually. But the point is, the pack owns the Cafe, and the Cafe has a small apartment on the top floor that's separate from the restaurant As the new Ulfrana, you can use that apartment for whatever you want."

"Why Jamil, you keep talking to me like that and I'll give you a big wet kiss right on the lips."

Jamil chuckled, but she did notice him check her out suddenly. He shrugged as he was caught at it. "Well, I might want to take you up on it someday."

Buffy took another look at him. Jamil was tall, muscular, not all that bad looking, and had great hair. Sure, he seemed to be a bit of an asshole, but then again she wasn't looking to marry the guy. And it had been nearly a century. As Faith would have said it, there was an itch that might need a good scratching. "Oh we definitely might want to look into it sometime."

Jamil disappeared for a moment while she gathered her bags and the cashbox. He reappeared and handed her a key. "Come on, I'll show you the apartment. It's furnished. Nothing fancy, but it will do until you either get your own place or decide to just live there permanently and redecorate. It's a separate space from the Cafe; there's a staircase around the side."

Buffy followed him, actually looking forward to getting into a space that wasn't surrounded by hookers and street people. With the job, and now a place to stay, things were actually beginning to look up for her. She stopped when Jamil did, still in the parking lot. He was staring at the woman now approaching them.

"Or we could do this right now." Buffy heard him mutter to himself.

"So, Jamil..." the unknown woman began. "Got a call from Shang-Da that said Richard had been challenged at the Cafe and lost." The woman looked through the windows into the Cafe. Her eyes tracked the various individuals still inside. "So... which one is he?"

"You really want to do this now?" Jamil glanced at Buffy. Buffy cocked her head, asking silently what was going on. "There's already been a pack meeting called at the lupanar tomorrow to take care of it."

"I'm in the neighborhood, so why wait?" The woman glanced at Buffy and immediately dismissed her from consideration. Deep inside herself, Buffy bristled at the base discourtesy.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

Jamil and the new woman seemed to flinch, and Jamil once again glanced at Buffy. He stared at the new arrival, then sighed.

"Sylvie Barker, Geri-Intendant of Thronnos Rokke, may I present Buffy Summers. Ulfrana of Thronnos Rokke."

"What, _her?_ _She_ challenged Richard?" The woman, Sylvie, seemed aghast.

"Actually it was more like Richard challenged me." Buffy said. "I didn't challenge him." She saw where this was going. She sighed and stepped closer to a bench outside the cafe. Buffy her bags and the cashbox down. For a moment, Buffy contemplated taking her blouse off and fighting in just her brassiere. It was a nice blouse, and she didn't want it ruined. "I had no intention of taking over a werewolf pack. But what's done is done."

_**DOMINANCE**_

Buffy turned back to where the woman was still standing near Jamil. "Jamil, watch my things." The Skoll nodded obediently, something that was not missed by Sylvie, whose eyes narrowed. "Listen, um, was it Sylvie, or Sylvia?"

"Sylvie." The response was almost a growl.

"Right, sorry. I'm horrible at names. I've been calling Richard 'Alfred' all night. I just wanted you to know that I..."

"That's your plan? Talking me to death?" With that, Sylvie leaped. Buffy ducked under the woman's extended arms, casually noting that her hands were now fur-covered and claw-like. She spun on the ball of her left foot, bringing her right leg around in a lightning-fast kick that slammed Buffy's heel into Sylvie's solar plexus. Buffy recovered, stepped into Sylvie's reach, and punched her once, twice, three-times, to Sylvie's throat, her solar plexus again, and to the nerve bundle in her groin. Then Buffy stepped back to watch.

Sylvie landed in a heap on the pavement. She was gulping large, painful buckets-full of air with lungs that truly didn't want to work any longer. The woman gagged, trying to get control of her breathing, her muscles, control of anything while a threatening predator stood above her, but nothing worked.

Buffy nodded, then looked at Jamil. "Good enough?"

The black man nodded. She then turned to the crowd that had gathered in the door of the Cafe to watch the confrontation. "What about you folks, good enough?" There was a parade of nodding heads and the occasional, "Yeah, good enough."

"Jamil, grab my things. Let's get her up to the apartment and sitting down." Buffy leaned down and helped Sylvie stand. "Come on, Sylvie. Let's get you off the ground. Maybe get you a drink of water or something. Don't worry about walking, I'll carry you." With that, she picked the woman up in a bridal carry and followed Jamil once more.

Behind them, Shelly the waitress had pulled out her cell phone. She was going to call everybody she knew on the planet Earth and tell them what just happened.

**XxxxxxX**

The CVS hadn't had everything Buffy needed to live in the new apartment, but it had the essentials. Shampoo, hairbrush, toothpaste, the usual. It was a nice enough night, and the walk wasn't really a bother, either. It certainly gave Buffy enough time to think about things. Now, on her way back to her new home, she was for the first time in nearly a century in this new world actually having what could be termed a good time. Oh sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was at least as good as it could get.

After Buffy's confrontation with Sylvie, Jamil seemed to have settled something within himself, as if he had given up the "wait and see" attitude and was beginning to accept her as a leader. That was probably a good thing. He and Sylvie had taken Buffy back to the hotel to retrieve her things, once Sylvie was breathing again. Turns out Sylvie was all right, now that Buffy had beat the crap out of her without breaking a sweat.

Buffy sighed as she took in the city's nighttime skyline. There was too much light pollution to see the stars, which was too bad. She couldn't completely mope around, though. Things were looking up, and much more quickly than she expected, but still there were feelings of discontent. Some things had gone really well. She had a new job, after all, and the short time that she'd run the store alone had been fun. Buffy was sure she could do well at the book-store, Larry Mitchell's twitchiness and neuroses aside. And now, because of the werewolf pack, she had a roof over her head that didn't involve being able to hear the neighboring prostitutes work their trade at three in the morning.

She was getting to know people in town, and looked like at least some of them had the potential to be friends. But still, she missed her family. The sad part it had been so long since she'd seen them that she was beginning to forget them. The details were wearing away, ground down by the weight of time. She couldn't remember what color Xander's hair was, for example, or how old Dawn had been when she'd leaped from Glory's tower. The little things that once seemed so important, now were gone.

She'd have to get used to it, though. This was her life now. For however long it lasted. Time to make a new family. Some new friends. The wolves could become that new family, if she let them.

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_**ETERNAL**_

_Yeah, like that's reassuring._ The thought that she might be immortal wasn't exactly thrilling. She'd had too many talks with Angel over the problem of not getting older when everyone around you got all wrinkly and gray to like the thought of not growing older. Living to see some sort of high-tech far off future might seem cool on paper, but the cost might be too much to bear in the long run.

_So. My new... well, my old philosophy made all shiny again... will be 'Life is short' even if it isn't. Well, it isn't for me. But it is for them. So seize the day and all that._

_**AMUSEMENT**_

_**WISDOM**_

_Thank you. Glad you agree._

Buffy glanced up at the sky one more time and began humming to herself. She wasn't sure what the song was, but when she thought about it thought it might have been something she heard one of the guards singing to himself back around 1948 or thereabouts. For a moment, she thought to let it bother her that she could remember a tune from 1948, fifty years prior, that she'd heard once, but couldn't remember what color Dawn's eyes were, but then decided to shrug it off.

"Da dum dum dum, ding dum dum dum... when we must say goodbye... soon you'll be sailing... da da dum dum dum... Mmmm... mmmm... ammmm... mmmm..."

She was still smiling and humming as she approached the Cafe and her new apartment. She was even swinging the bags full of newly purchased personal items in what she thought was a jaunty fashion. She stopped doing both when she saw the SUV, and the two individuals standing next to it.

The woman was barely taller than Buffy herself, with an elfin face and long black hair. She was dressed casually, but not overly casual. Brown leather jacket over a white t-shirt and black denim trousers, with calf-high boots. Buffy looked her up and down, once. The woman was wearing a pair of pistols in quick-release holsters, just below each of her kidneys. Their positioning allowed the jacket to cover them up, away from casual view.

The man, on the other hand, was tall, over six feet, and pretty-enough. He was blonde, and wore his hair long, and combed over half of his face. The man was dressed in a frilly white shirt that looked like it belonged on one of the singers from those 70s glam-rock bands her mother liked to listen to, and black leather pants that were clinging to the man so tightly that Buffy could tell he was uncircumcised.

And he was a vampire. The presence in the back of her head seemed to crouch, metaphorically, as if getting ready for a fight. Her pace slowed to a near crawl as she got closer to the pair; she gave them a sideways glance, but otherwise ignored them. Buffy stepped wide around them, giving them lots of space, as she turned down the side alley next to the Cafe, aiming for the outside staircase that led directly to the apartment.

"That's got to be her. She matches the description Sheila gave us." Buffy heard the woman say to the vampire. She rolled her eyes; Buffy would be having a long talk with Sheila in the morning about telling tales out of school. "Hey! You! We need to talk to you. Now." The tone of the woman's voice indicated that she expected to be obeyed without question. Buffy felt, more than she actually saw, the two people follow her down the alley.

Buffy stopped, her foot on the first step leading up to the apartment. She counted to twenty, in French, then looked back over her shoulder. "Good for you. Thing is, I've had a long day, and I'm tired and need a shower. So I'm going to go have a shower and then am going to lay down. You two have fun." Buffy took two more steps up when suddenly the vampire was there in front of you.

"We're here to take you to the Master of the City." The parasite crossed his arms, as if the argument were over. "You will come with us."

_**PREY**_

Behind her, Buffy heard the woman draw one of her pistols. She didn't think it was pointed at her yet, but it was out. Buffy stopped and grinned up at the vampire. "No, I won't come with you, Mr. Rude Vampire Man. I told you, I'm going to take a shower now, and then lie down. If your Master of the City wants to talk to me, he can give me a call here at the Cafe tomorrow, after I get off of work."

"It wasn't a reque -" The vampire stopped talking, shocked as Buffy shoved him out of the way with one arm and stepped past him and resumed her climb up the stairs. Within seconds, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder and spun her around. The thin plastic of the CVS bag snagged and tore, and Buffy's incidentals spilled down the staircase. Buffy ignored the vampire, instead watching her purchases scatter on the ground.

"You are so paying me back if anything just broke." Buffy looked up, directly into the vampire's eyes, refusing to back down an inch in the face of the undead thing.

**XxxxxxX**

Asher frowned as the girl met his eyes. The attempt to roll the girl's mind was automatic and reflexive, but it was like trying to climb a sheer, ice-cold sheet of polished marble. His power could find no hand-hold on which to batten. And behind that wall of marble he could feel a great and terrible power waiting to be unleashed upon him. The girl smirked at him, obviously aware of what just happened. It wasn't a humorous smirk, a sarcastic smirk. No, this was the cruel smirk of a bully spotting a victim.

There was a pulse of _something_, suddenly, that came from nowhere and everywhere at once that crawled up Asher's spine like a spider. It caused a fearful feeling in Asher that he was utterly unused to. He found himself taking a step backward, away from her, almost stumbling as he tripped up the stairs.

"Trust me, you don't want to go peeking into my head. And I told you, the guy you work for can leave a message for me at the cafe and we can set up an appointment to meet if he wants." The girl again stepped past Asher, this time bending regularly to pick up her dropped purchases. When she gathered them up in the one remaining bag, she turned back to Asher, who was still staring at her in shock.

"How can you do that?" Asher asked.

The girl huffed. "It's simple. I bend over, I use my fingers to grab the stuff I dropped, I put it in my bag. You want to get out of my way now so I can go take a shower in my nice, new apartment?" Asher looked past her at Anita, who was holding one of her pistols down at her side. The girl followed Asher's gaze.

"Are you planning on forcing me to go with you at gunpoint? Because that's kidnapping." Asher watched as Anita blinked, then put the pistol back in it's holster. The Executioner opened her mouth to say something, but the blonde beat her to it. "Of course, a vampire forcing a human being to go somewhere against her will is also kidnapping. Wonder what the local Vampire Executioner would think about that."

"What?" Anita asked.

"A vampire and a female gunslinger forcing me to go someplace I don't want to go against my will. Sounds like a perfect reason to issue an execution warrant for the vampire." The girl's eyes went to Anita. "But you're human. You'll just get life in prison. Unless I'm injured in the kidnapping, or worse, killed. And then you'll get the death penalty." Another smirk. "What's the preferred method of executing condemned criminals here in Missouri?"

"Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but I'm the local Vampire Executioner."

"You're Anita Blake?" Buffy gave her a discerning gaze. "Well, that explains a lot. I'd heard that the local vampire executioner was in bed with the local vampire lord." She smirked at Anita and shrugged. "Literally in bed. Ah well, this isn't the first time a cop was on the take with the the mob. Or was sleeping with a mob boss, for that matter."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Anita seemed outraged. "I'm not on the take."

"And yet here you are, you're doing black bag work for the local vampire crime boss. Pull the other one." She turned to Asher. "Now, you... you need to step aside. If I have to, I'll make you, but I'm trying to keep this polite."

Anita called out, "If you're a human being, I'll eat my shoes. We have it on good authority that you managed to knock the Ulfric of Thronnos Rokke off his throne tonight. That makes you a lycanthrope, which puts you in the jurisdiction of the Master of the City. And he wants to talk to you. It's not polite to set up shop in someone else's city without permission."

That caused the girl to laugh. It was an uproarious laugh, not just a dainty giggle.

"What the fuck is so funny?" Anita asked.

"Oh, wow. Sorry, I needed that." The girl glanced at Asher, who's expression was grim, and he could see her restrain another laugh. There was a second pulse of _something _that came from her, and almost as soon as it hit she was laughing again. Asher and Anita rode the laughter out, both of them growing more impatient.

"I asked you a question." Asher could see Anita's hand trail toward her gun again. "What's so funny?"

"You are. You're so funny, idiot. Both of you." The girl shook his head. "It's almost like you haven't been paying attention. 'It's not polite to set up shop in someone else's city'."

"And to what have we not been paying attention, mon enfant?" Asher arched an eyebrow at her.

"First, I'm not your child. I'm not your anything and won't ever be your anything. And second, you missed the part where you vampires are citizens of the United States now. That means you're all subject to the laws of the United States. And the highest law of all in the US is the Constitution."

"So?"

"So I don't remember giving up my Constitutional rights when I beat up Alfred. _So_, this city doesn't belong to Mister Bigshot Vampire City Master Guy. _So_ he has no 'jurisdiction' at all because he's not a part of the government. _So, _he has no authority to order me to do anything I don't want to do." The blonde smiled, widely this time, showing her teeth. It was a serial killer smile, one that promised bloody violence. "To put it bluntly, the Master of the City can kiss my behind and smile."

Once again, the girl shoved her way past Asher with almost casual ease. Still in shock over her brazen disrespect of Jean-Claude, he followed her up. As she put down her bags to get out her keys, Asher decided that enough was enough. He grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands and spun her around.

"That will be enough of this non-sense ridicule! You will come with us, right now, if I have to pick you up and carry you!"

The girl looked down Asher's hands, which were still holding her arms, then again looked up into his eyes. For a second time, his power was repulsed, and for a second time, he felt something icy cold and alien behind them.

There was no fear in her gaze. Only pure, unadulterated rage. "I don't remember giving you permission to touch me." Before he knew what was happening, Asher had crashed into the ground and slid, not stopping until he was out in the street to which the alleyway connected. Everything from his neck to his waist felt as if struck by a wrecking ball. Blood oozed from his mouth, and several spots along his ribs felt not just broken but shattered. He was unconscious from the pain within seconds.

**XxxxxxX**

Anita at first didn't realize what had happened. When her brain caught up, she was already reaching for her pistols. It didn't help. Anita managed to get a first shot off while the girl was moving, but unbelievably it missed and slammed into the wood of the staircase's banister. The girl, who unbelievably had just punched Asher so hard he'd flown, was down the stairs and in front of Anita before the executioner could even blink. Anita's second shot went high and wide as the blonde slapped Anita's hand away. With her other hand she took hold of Anita's shoulder and squeezed.

Anita screamed as the bones in her shoulder seemed to grind together. Her strength drove Anita to her knees. The blonde pulled the pistol from Anita's hand, all the while keeping hold of her shoulder. The reality of her oncoming death struck Anita Blake full force. She was about to die at the hands of a renegade werewolf who refused to play by the rules, shot with her own weapon in an alley. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

And then the girl surprised Anita Blake by dropping the pistol at her feet and leaving it there.

"I asked you to leave me alone, but you wouldn't. No, you thought it would be more fun to kidnap me." Anita tried to squirm away as the girl gave her an efficient if one-handed pat down. She came away with Anita's handcuffs, which were immediately put to use against Anita herself, and a handful of zip-tie restraints. "You know what your problem is, Anita? You think that rules only apply to other people. You think you're in charge of everything, when you're not. And it's time you learned that the world doesn't revolve around you. It's time you learned that you don't always get everything you want." The blonde girl let go of Anita's shoulder, and the now-handcuffed executioner fell to her knees.

The blonde girl continued the pat-down, relieving Anita of her cell phone and her other gun. Anita watched as she leaned down and picked up the first pistol, holding both weapons in one hand. "These things? Anita, they never help. Give them up." With that, the girl simply squeezed her hand into a fist. The metal of the pistols bent and twisted until the two were merged in a hunk of pop-art. Then she zip-tied Anita's ankles together.

"Okay. I'm going to carry you to the car. If you attack me, I'll drop you and then drag you by your ankles. Either way, you're going into the car. How comfortable your trip is up to you." Anita's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as the girl tossed her over a shoulder. She tossed Anita into the back floorboard of the SUV.

Anita couldn't see what the girl was doing anymore, but heard it when the girl spoke. "Yes, hello. I'd like to report an attempted kidnapping! I'm in an alley next to the Lunatic... right you have my location. No, I'm not in any danger. I disabled my kidnappers. I'm a black belt. A man and a woman. The man's a vampire. I attacked him by surprise. No. No, I'm... right. No, the woman had handcuffs and some of those zip-tie things that police use now. I've restrained them. I'm actually calling you from..." Her voice faded out below Anita's capacity to hear.

The executioner lay in face-down in the floorboard, wondering just what the hell was going on, and sweating. She had no idea how she was going to explain this to the guys at RPIT. She knew the kidnapping charge would go nowhere, but it was still going to be embarrassing

"Son of a bitch. When Jean-Claude hears about this, he's going to go ape-shit." Anita jerked in surprise when the back cargo door of the SUV was opened, and Asher's unconscious body was tossed in. She found herself partially buried under the vampire. She tried to roll over to get a better view, but with her ankles restrained, it was hard to move.

The girl was still talking. "No, actually there are security cameras in the alley, so I'm sure there's footage. Yes, I live in the... right." There was a sigh. "Yes, I guess you could say I was a part of the lycanthropic community. No. No. No, ma'am. The full moon isn't for another 18 days. Don't worry, I intend to be."

The girl stuck her head into the side window of the SUV. "Okay, Anita. The cops are coming for you. Be a good girl. I'm going to go put my stuff away and then wait for them."

"Let me out of these things, you bitch!" Anita demanded.

"Uh, no. The cops might release you, but I'm not going to. You tried to kidnap me. Worse, you shot at me while doing so. You threatened my life and my freedom, so I am absolutely not letting you go."

"You're a dead woman. I'm going to fucking kill you, you bitch!"

"And I'll be sure to tell the cops that you threatened to murder me when I talk to them." She could hear the blonde girl sigh. "Now, I heard somewhere that you're a Federal Marshal. While I expect that's not going to last too long, it does mean you're probably going to be out of jail before tomorrow night. Come back at me and I'll hurt you permanent."

"Also, and this is very important, I'm making a complaint against your boss. He ordered the kidnapping. That's accessory before the fact or conspiracy to commit or something. I don't remember. It's been a while since I watched _Law and Order._ You tell your boss that the next time he wants to talk to someone, he should try to have some manners. Act civilized. This kidnapping stuff is going to get him into trouble. I don't have a phone of my own, but he can leave a message for me at the Cafe. We'll arrange a meeting." The girl leaned into the car and waggled a finger over Anita's face. "But I am not at his beck and call and neither are any of my wolves. You make sure and tell him that. My wolves are no longer his toys."

There was a pulse of power from nowhere, and it made Anita twitch. A pulse of effervescent pain shot through the marks left on her body and soul by Jean-Claude.

"Are you going to give him my message?"

"Yeah, I'll tell him, I'll tell him." Anita nodded. Her head felt light, but surprisingly she no longer felt like she was going to faint.

"Good. I'll be looking forward to his call."

**XxxxxxX**

_From the shadows, unseen and unsensed by everyone around him, Arlecchino watched as the monster in the shape of a girl played her games with the vampire and the human woman. The monster was definitely why his master had commanded him to come to Saint Louis._

_His master would be pleased._

_The monster would be confronted by Arlecchino's master, and would be forced to assist in the grand plan. Such a powerful being, with such a deep and wonderful connection with the Shining Darkness, could not be allowed to disrupt the Grand Plan by acting on it's own._

_The monster would be halter-broken, and would follow the Master's orders, or it would be destroyed._

_Arlecchino stepped back into the darkness, allowing it to embrace him and removing all traces of his presence. He would rest now. Soon enough it would be time for furious action. The Master's whore, Mademoiselle Nocturne, would be arriving soon in that ridiculously small meat sack it wore as a disguise, and then the fun would begin._

**XxxxxxX**

**Author's Note:** _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _is the property of Warner Brothers in conjunction with Mutant Enemy Productions. _Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter _is the property of Laurel K. Hamilton and her publisher. _The Sandman_ is the creation of Neil Gaiman, and is owned by DC Comics, which is itself a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The character Luther Black was created by Alan Thomas and appears in that writer's series of pulp homage crime nor stories dealing with square-jawed detectives hunting down dangerous cultists. He appears here with permission of the author. _The Middleton Legacy_ by August Decathlete is in the public domain.

**Author's Note the Second:** This chapter was originally much longer, and detailed out more of the police and their reaction to the kidnapping, as well as some of Jean-Claude's reaction to Buffy taking over Thronnos Rokke. Unfortunately, my computer crashed at one point and the save failed, so I had to reconstruct it from memory. I decided to leave that stuff for the next chapter.


End file.
